I have been thinking a lot about where I want to go with my work in this next chapter of my weird life. It occurred to me that maybe I should revisit recurring themes in my work to try to understand where I have come from or maybe where I always get caught up, snagged, obsessed. Certain ideas, motifs, patterns and symbols have popped up over and over again in my work–sometimes when I needed them and sometimes when I thought I didn’t.

I started making a list right before I turned out the light to go to sleep last night: Women, braided hair, hands, feet, eyes, dresses, shoes, houses, beds, chairs, books, teapots, tea cups, banjos, roses, sunflowers, vines, mushrooms, trees, roots, beetles, snails, snakes, dogs, crows, rabbits, foxes, coyotes and ghosts.

I woke up this morning and tried again. I didn’t look at last night’s list. I just started again. They were almost identical. While walking the dog, I started thinking about why I return to these objects and themes. That part of this work is harder. I also started thinking about what isn’t on the list. So many of the things on my list have to do with home life–but I don’t really paint domestic scenes. I did this for a short time when my kids were little, maybe, but the rest of the time I am doing something else.But what?

When I was a young artist, I think I glommed on to certain symbols to help me tell my story. I even used to discuss rebuses when talking about my work. There was a puzzle to be worked out or a code to break in my work back then as I was working out issues of identity. There wasn’t a literal code key, of course but I think I chose objects like my teapot to symbolize comfort and home. I think dresses and houses were much the same for me as symbols for the way I wanted to project my image to the world. Shoes were different though. I often painted girls and women with only one shoe. I think I was trying to say something about feeling incomplete or lost, unresolved. As I got older my women were often barefooted. Freedom? Resignation? I am not sure.

These were elements of a young woman’s narrative and I am not the same women now that I was way back then but sometimes I still use those same symbols. Why? I am going to have to think about this a while.