From the Beginning

There's an old song by Emerson Lake and Palmer called "From the Beginning" and a couple of lines from it are
"You see it's all clear
You were meant to be here
From the beginning"

And so I start here.

By vocation I am an artist and this blog is intended to chronicle my journey as an artist.  It's also meant to chronicle how my life as someone with mental illness impacts that journey, as well as my daily routine.  This is not intended to be a "woe is me" blog by any means, but rather simply to be open and aboveboard about my struggle with several disorders and how it affects EVERYTHING.  How it has changed EVERYTHING.

But I am not just my mental illness.  It's easy for people to hear that someone is mentally ill and automatically assign particular labels.  Crazy. Psycho. Violent.  Deranged.  Abnormal.  We all know this from how the media reports on mass shootings and acts of violence.  And so we become afraid to say openly that we deal with this.  I want to change that, even just in a small way like this chronicle.

Getting back to what it is I do, I could quote from my artist statement (rewritten many times according to the occasion) but I'll say simply that I do collage work and also work in mixed media, which is combining several artistic processes into one.  People say I'm pretty good at what I do.  My style is mainly taking vintage characters and displaying them along with appropriate materials, vintage and reproduction.  The trick is that in many of my pieces I include a saucy remark.   I do them in several styles - canvas wall art, cards and magnets mostly.

I do create serious pieces, but my favorites are the silly things.

Like this - 

"A Little Rowdy, Were We?"

I sell many of my pieces in my Etsy shop and you can find this particular birthday card here   

One thing I plan to do in this blog is to document my process, my inspirations (often music), and my journeys.   I hope you'll come along for the ride

Later,
Lin