Does Anyone Actually Know Why I Paint?

Since I left my 9-to-5, I've known one thing clearly: I can't build this alone. So I've been looking for signs, for people who could show me what I couldn't see in myself. I took one consultation with someone in BC — sent a thoughtful follow-up email after our call, and never heard back. I could have taken that as a sign to stop looking. Instead I kept going.

That's how I found a consultant in Toronto, someone whose work I'd actually been following for a while before I ever reached out. She responded. We got on a call, and honestly, the first one didn't amount to much — it was pleasant, it passed the time, and I hung up without any real clarity.

The second call is the one that stayed with me. She told me, plainly, that my colorful work gets filed under "decorative" the moment people see it — pretty, joyful, easy to hang and easy to forget. And then she asked me the question I hadn't let myself sit with: why do you actually paint the way you do? Because it can't just be about pretty colors.

That's when it hit me. I have never once lived a conventional life. I dropped out of college while people told me, with real conviction, that I'd never succeed without a degree. I went into events work, which plenty of people didn't consider "real" work. I married someone my family didn't approve of. I decided not to have children. Every one of those was a door I walked through anyway, knowing what it would cost me in other people's opinions.

So when I picked up a paintbrush and reached for hot pink instead of beige, that wasn't an aesthetic choice. It was the same choice I'd already made a dozen times before, just in a different medium. The color isn't decoration. It's defiance wearing a pretty dress.

If that's true — if the color is never just color — then what am I actually asking you to see when you look at my work?