keepsake. noun. a small item kept in memory of the person who gave it or originally owned it.

acrylic on canvas, April 2022

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I knew when I first set out to capture these items that the process work behind them should be painting. It is a medium that I actively try, and sometimes fail, to enjoy for the sake of doing it, making things. I don't have a rigid routine of practice, and I have no intentions of becoming "a painter" in the sense of skill or profitability. It is cathartic, embedded in a need to get emotions out into something else, and I am lucky to be able to make my attempts at having this relationship with it.

 

As for the works themselves, simply put they are "about the power of friendship" and in that I mean many things. Behind every item is someone who put it there. There are friends, yes, ones I speak to everyday. There are relatives, people who have made art I wanted to buy. There are also strangers represented who have handed me something they may never know follows me around from place to place. 

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There was a long time in my life where I did not know spaces like this were possible, for others, maybe, but not for me. In these works there is movement, the expansion of the canvas, and transformation in the vibrancy of colors from muted to overbearingly bright. This transformation is rooted in the struggles of growing up detached in the throes of my family's multi-generational alcoholism, left to face the lasting impression of a childhood wall-to-wall with chaotic spaces, and the bursting freedom felt from building my own with the help of people who care.

 

While my recovery continues, not easy but getting easier, I can proudly say that at the core of these pieces is so much love, in the journey here and the present moment, looking onward.

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I hope you walk away from this collection as a whole thinking about someone, or many someones, the people behind the things. If you can, talk to them soon, for me.​

- Arlowe

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