I have spent many afternoons in the past five months pondering what has brought me to this moment. For me, it is from a place of understanding changes and wonder of the unpredictability of life. I also love to contemplate how ten or twenty years ago it never would have occurred to me that I’d be here now doing this, which also leads to wondering where I’ll be in another ten or twenty years.

All this ruminating inspired a series of abstract self portraits of my past, present, and future. These paintings play heavily into my interest in memory and how our minds can deceive us. The grey reflects the haziness of memory and how time can blur memories, especially the distant past of childhood. The round shape in the middle of the canvases represents a nucleus, a concept which popped into my head while working on the large, square canvases. My rudimentary definition of nucleus is a center where important “things” happen. Of course, I also think about a cell’s nucleus and DNA, a metaphor for ideas being born and the blueprint for everything the body is and does. Art is a part of my metaphorical DNA.

The first two paintings encompass the first part of my life; memories that are very hazy and spotty, especially of early childhood. The third, colorful, painting represents high school and college. This time period was very intense, as is normal for a teenager, and art probably/mostly consumed my life, especially as an art major in college. I was wildly idealistic and impatient for my life to begin, unable to appreciate the value of being in the moment. I do remember, though, in college thinking, “I’ll probably never again have the chance to spend all my time focused on making art”. I also knew as an art major without any marketable job skills or experiences my employment opportunities would be less than exciting, so I took my time completing my degree despite thinking that my real life would start after college.

The fourth and fifth pieces represent my time in the Pacific Northwest, the journey to figure out “what to do with my life”, going to medical school, and moving back to the midwest. Now that it has been over seven years since I moved to Goshen, my time in Portland is starting to run together in a haze of memories. About half of my years there were spent in school, also an incredibly stressful and intense experience of personal, often painful, growth.

The last painting is the future, an unknown. The composition mimics the feel of a landscape and the sensation of looking into the distance. Again, grey representing the unknown. The present is represented in all six paintings. My present encompasses all of this history and is ever changing in my memory. I did this series purely for myself, with little concern for whether or not it would be visually attractive or appealing to others, and consider it an extension of my Twenty-Year Diary Project.

What’s a surprising turn your life has taken? How has it affected you?