FIRE INSIDE (v2)
11x14.5in canvas art / 8.25x11.75 lyrics / 16x24in frame
ink transfer, acrylic, acrylic ink/pen, oil pastel
—
the left:
play big / say no / let the fire inside lead
(trust your intuition)
how it started
one day i started painting on this canvas. i added a couple random ink transfers, i added a few more random colours and finished it off with some doodles. i didn’t have any sort of plan; it was a bit chaotic-good / was led by the fire inside.
the result is some kind of story about taking space, using your voice, and feeling ridiculously passionate about whatever you do, even if nobody seems to care. that’s the fire.
version one
july 2024, 12x15.75in canvas
i had just returned home after a pretty long and exhausting summer road trip at the end of june where i bought this canvas from a thrift store in squamish, bc.
without a plan i started putting colours on it in the most unplanned and calm state. i never questioned any part of it and just followed what my hands did.
version two
jan 2025, 11x14.5in
i had a new idea for the artwork (see photos) and amidst the process and stripping the canvas off of the wood frame, i had to fix a couple things. i decided to make a ~few small changes which, of course, turned into bigger changes than anticipated. this was, again, all without a plan. i even thought multiple times “i may have ruined this” …but i trusted myself enough to keep going.
it ended up being messier and way more chaotic than i wanted but then i realized—the fire inside is always a mess.
and with that, i loved it more.
i started ripping the canvas off the frame early one morning right in the kitchen while making coffee because the vision was so strong that i couldn’t wait
“this could work…” (the idea was to somehow pair the artwork beside these handwritten lyrics—keep reading)
version two of the painting in all its absolute mess (adding more black parts in paint pen instead of white was intentional)
—
the right:
near the end of the year i listened to “broken bow” by john calvin abney, an artist i had very recently discovered.
almost instantly, the song made me feel the same kinda way as i did when i did the initial painting… like something was immediately lit inside.
i was tired (physically, mentally, emotionally), but i knew i still had some sort of fire.
never seen a fire, like the one inside her
even when she’s tired, she could melt Sierra snow
and make the goldenrod grow
when i saw that he had handwritten lyrics for sale as merch, i bought it without really thinking (or even remembering that canada post was about to go on strike).
i briefly thought about going back to that much simpler idea of merely hanging it in close proximity even though i had already demolished the canvas frame… but this didn’t last.
(the simple way wasn’t good enough. it wasn’t what i wanted to say with it, and i had another problem).
the lyrics were written on a pretty odd paper size that didn’t fit any frame i had ever seen...and a pretty great frame i found a week prior at a thrift store fit the height of my canvas art almost perfectly, so it seemed to be an obvious solution.
the mixed media artist in me got to work and after more foamcore and poster board measuring and cutting than i had done in over a decade… it was done.
—
final result:
even though it was more of a process than my original idea, as soon as i had this idea in my head i couldn’t let it go.
the juxtaposition of the white to black and (more specifically) messy, colourful, chaos to simplified thoughts and visuals works to sum up the fire inside that usually drives my creative process (and entire life).
there’s some signs you can’t ignore
(trust your intuition)