It’s past midnight and it’s all dark in here. There’s something bothering me about my latest paintings. I don’t know what’s wrong and I can’t shake it off. When I started painting again after almost 5 years of blockages and artistic drought, I was so focused on getting passed the anxiety, the fear, the queasiness and the nausea I felt just being near my easel. Getting started again without feeling afraid was my goal. I’ve reached that goal and now I’m focused on other things, like finding the right expression, the right artistic voice, the visual language that is true to who I am now and letting go of who I was when I stopped painting in 2010. I can’t connect with certain elements of the style – but then I also wish to go back to other elements that I’ve lost along the way. I have a deeply complicated relationship with painting. I both love it and hate it. It’s the centre point of my creativity and yet I lack flow and a sense of clarity. I feel like something is missing and at the same time like something is suffocating me. I need to figure it all out before I go on working in the paintings. I won’t finish the one I’ve been working on lately. I wish I wasn’t this insecure about my art, especially the paintings. I wish I had a more cohesive style. But at least I’m not being pretentious or making horror for the sake of horror. I’m not a poser. I’m real and my art has to be real, otherwise I can’t stand behind it.

It’s time to get real.

But first, it’s time to get some beauty sleep.