The Time We Spend Looking Outside - What's Behind the Flood Series.

Exactly one year ago yesterday Milwaukee had it's biggest flood in recent memory, closing State Fair, submerging cars on the highway and causing millions of dollars in damage throughout the area. I only lost a few paintings, a couch and a month of evenings and weekends to cleanup, but I also had a bit of a realization...

I never intended to make this series. The largest painting from this year (48x36") would have typically been among the smallest in a show from previous years, but for weeks after the flood I couldn't start anything large.There was a pervasive and constant stress that came with a large, empty canvas. Like I didn't think I could commit the time, or perhaps that there wasn't enough time in the first place. Catastrophe had hit and with every report of rain, it felt like another catastrophe was just around the corner. Why start something if you can't finish?

I found solace in the smaller scale. I could sit on the couch with a pack of painting markers, throw on a show or movie and get through a painting in a few hours, a day, or a couple over the weekend. There was much needed comfort in having control and the finish line in sight. It wasn't grand, but it was doable, and that was important. It also may sound stupid but the drawing aspect of the scale and acrylic markers felt more direct, controlled, and immediate and with no cleanup, guilt-free as I am a notorious brush destroyer and cleanup procrastinator. It felt easier and that's what I needed.

I also realized I was primarily making waterscapes, which I then realized, although maybe already knew, that waterscapes were an extremely common subject matter that repeated in my art since high school and beyond. The painting above, for instance, was one of only two I completed in the entire month of August following the flood. The paintings to the right were actually completed in the two months leading up to the flood, despite the similarities and timely subject matter.

While thinking about this I realized it made total sense. Growing up we had a family cottage on the Mississippi which found us spending almost every weekend on the river; I attended a YMCA summer camp in northern Minnesota for upwards of six years which featured canoe trips and sailing camp; during college we had regular trips to the beach on lake Michigan; I was on a swim team in grade and high school; and now my immediate family has a yearly waterpark trip we take in the Dells. Then the flood came. Water had been an inspiration and constant source of comfort, bringing memories and milestones filled with fun and family and friends, and then I was betrayed. This important part of my life became sinister. Where I used to go outside during storms, now I pace back and forth, checking the basement every 20 minutes, praying for drought. I remember the dread I felt at the end of winter simply because the water would no longer be frozen.

I don't mean to be overdramatic of course but realizing I had all these lifelong connections and formative moments with water, while, for the first time feeling anxiety because of it made me closely consider this inspiration that lurks behind my compulsion to create...and the small-scale canvases became the absolute perfoect place to explore and ease these tensions. 

I've never been a traveller and have always worried this somehow narrowed my scope and negatively impacted the potential of my work. All of art history is filled with transience and tales of impermanence; artists that "found their voice" when they went abroad; immigrants who found freedom by exploring new lands. Over the last year, throughout (and because) of this series I've, for the first time, felt like the midwest environment I've grown up in is something that actually breathed life into my paintings and made them personal and truly unique to me rather than providing a barrier to more worldly exploration. Through that realization I've been growing toward embracing that and while I should probably still travel more, I can also take pride in these experiences, embrace them as my own, and begin to understand them not as a barrier but the foundation of the artist I've become. 

I still check the basement after a hard rain and I wouldn't say I am thankful for the flood, but I think it did take this negative situation for me to fully embrace what had, up to this point, been a constant, but one that was often ignored. 

It's easy to overlook that which we rely upon.
​Too often we can only hope it's still there when we finally realize its importance. 

The Time We Spend Looking Outside featuring work by Daniel Fleming and Fernando Rico, hosted by the Carnelian Art Gallery in Madison Wisconsin, is up through the end of August. Take a look at the gallery website HERE and check out pictures from the opening HERE. Make sure to head to the contact page to sign up for the newsletter to keep up with new art and info.