Building The New Empire

"Building the New Empire" - oil on cradled wood panel, 6 x 12 x .75.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.


When we hold onto the pieces of a life that existed within a chapter we’ve outgrown, we feel increasing pain and discomfort. This is not because we are meant to spend any additional time dissecting what went wrong and what we wish we would have done and what could have or would have or should have happened.

​ It means that instead of standing in the ruins, we have to get to work building the new empire, the new way, the new life. We have to think less about what’s gone, and more about how we will turn every regret into a plan for the future. We are meant to take every disappointment and learn to see within it the truth of what we actually desire, what we really want, who we are truly supposed to be. - BRIANNA WIEST

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Building the New Empire

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I spend a lot of time ruminating and standing in the ruins.  Some of the habit of rumination can be attributed to introversion, being highly sensitive, having survived trauma and abuse.  But I believe a good portion of it is simply habit.  My brain falls into replaying conversations, and dissecting what went wrong instead of working on building the new empire. Wiest's words are part of a larger writing which begins with this: Your new life is going to cost you your old one.  Whoa.

And here we are - art imitating life, as the old paintings are obliterated by gesso and the new empire takes form on top of them. And again, whoa.

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​About the art:  beginning with a rubber wedge and leftover oil paint on a palette.  Moving the paint until a composition and form takes shape, then adding color, texture, line and nuance with a smaller wedge, chopsticks, a soft cloth, fingers.  Allowing the geometry to emerge while encouraging hard and soft edges.

These mini galactic abstracts are beginning to form a lovely gallery wall in the studio.  Small pieces with big impact.  Big worlds lasso'd and held for view.