live painting at allships holiday party
allships hosted its annual holiday party the week before christmas
and I spent the night live painting on one of the biggest canvases I’ve ever worked with. Live creating for an audience is something I had only done a couple of times before, so I was both excited and nervous for the night ahead. While the event was a huge success and I got to connect with a number of amazing people, I definitely experienced a rollercoaster of emotions throughout the night. As someone who prefers to create alone at night when the world is asleep, having so many eyes on me while I painted was a bit anxiety-inducing.
Over the course of the night, I ripped the canvas in half, layered more paint over the parts I didn’t like, and ultimately abandoned my brushes to finger paint like a 5 year old. Was I having a slight mental breakdown? Maybe. But that’s kind of the beautiful thing about art - you get to channel your emotions into it to create something that people can connect with in their own way.
After ripping the canvas in half, I received many comments like “why did you do that, it looked so beautiful as it was!” But the whole purpose of art is to express how I’m feeling. I felt frustration and anxiety around the painting, so I put that into the creation itself. After all, the creative process is oftentimes much more important than the final result. Despite the anxiety I felt while live painting, it was an experience that pushed me way out of my comfort zone, and I learned a lot from it.
And after everything I went through with the canvas that night - I ended up losing it somewhere in Brooklyn along with all of my art supplies. It’s kind of ironic that I stressed so much over this piece of art, just for it to end up getting thrown out in a random bar at 2am. It’s kind of beautiful in a way. Maybe it’s a metaphor. I don’t know.