Vanessa Diffenbaugh's "The Language of Flowers" & Work In Progress

As I got into yesterday, I love to read - and I read a lot.

One book that has meant a lot to me in the last few years is Vanessa Diffenbaugh's The Language of Flowers. You might understand why if you've been reading along when I was talking about my honors thesis for several tedious blog entries. I heard about this book whose primary trope was using flowers as a means of conveying messages and I just had to read it. I had already completed my thesis by this point (it was published in 2011 and I graduated EMU in 2010), but I was still making floral watercolor paintings. I wanted to find out what other feelings or symbolism I could convey with flowers besides focusing on women's sexuality all the time.

Well, of course the book isn't really about the Victorian symbolism of flowers. There's a lot more to it than that. It's about a beautiful, strong young woman named Victoria who doesn't understand how beautiful and strong she is because the world has worn her down. Freshly emancipated from the foster care system, she has known more grief than love. What's worse, she thinks this is what she deserves.

One of my favorite books of all time.

I connected with Victoria in such a personal way. I was not unloved as a child, I didn't go through the system - in fact, as I said in my last entry, I lived a pretty sheltered life and experienced trauma only secondhand, through fiction stories I discovered at my local library. But somehow I still manage to beat up on myself, still manage to convince myself that I am not enough, not worthy of human needs like companionship or love or happiness. I think I only have myself to blame, that I'm the only one keeping me back from realizing my potential. I don't have a troubled past like Victoria to fall back on, to explain why I so willingly self-sabotage my own happiness - which makes me feel even worse, frankly. Because that means it really is all up to me, all my own fault, my own learned helplessness, something that I taught myself with little or no prodding from outside forces.

Regardless of where we come from - privilege or oppression, security or a series of childhood traumas - we're all still capable of low self-esteem, of self-loathing, of depression, or any other kind of mental illness. We all have days when we're going to get down on ourselves - some of us more than others. It's going to happen. We have to learn strategies to shake it off. We have to not believe ourselves when we say things like "I am not enough." Because that's bullshit. What does that even mean? We're all enough. We're all more than enough. The only standards for humanity are the ones we impose upon ourselves. We can choose not to listen to them. Well, we can try not to listen, anyway.

That's the feeling this book gave me. In my Goodreads review (written in 2013) I wrote:

"Since my thesis in 2010 I have done very little painting. The few I have done were still of flowers, but only superficially. I steered clear from attempts to invoke any sort of significance, pairing them with frivolous, feminine patterns to encourage reading them only as objects of pure decoration.

"Two unfinished watercolors, both dahlias (which, according to Vanessa Diffenbaugh's helpful flower dictionary at the end of this book, signify "dignity"), have sat untouched in my studio for months. The first layers are frozen, looking better than I'd hoped when I started them, simultaneously surprising me and making me wary to pick up my brush and continue (for what if future layers ruined what little I'd successfully done?).

"Watercolor, such a large part of my life only three years ago, had all but dwindled completely away. I didn't necessarily mind - directionless in my career, I didn't know how or how much or even if painting was meant to fit into my life long-term - but family continued to ask what paintings I was working on, implicit concern behind their questions. If I wasn't painting, why not? And was this perhaps a symptom of another, larger problem?

"This book did more than make me weep. For the first time in a long time, I wanted so badly to finish my dahlia watercolors and start a hundred new ones that I seriously considered running downstairs at 3 am to do so. Instead, I pulled my notebook off my nightstand and wrote down this feeling, so it will be available for reference in the future. My watercolors will still be waiting for me tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. But these words have to be captured tonight:

"Just like Victoria, I am worthwhile. I am loved. It's okay to make mistakes. I shouldn't be afraid to paint."

(You can read my full Goodreads review of The Language of Flowers here.)

So, you may be wondering if, in the two years since reading that book and writing that review, I ever got around to finishing my Dahlia painting.

"When Fear Gets in the Way" by Andrea Arbit - 15"x11" Watercolor on Paper

Remember this painting? (I posted this picture in the first entry of this blog.) Yeah, I didn't finish it. I had already unstapled it from my gatorboard, which means that it wasn't stretched out anymore, so any subsequent layers I added would make the paper wrinkled. I mean, there are ways to unwrinkle paper. A regular clothes iron, for instance, which is what I usually use.

But there were also a few spots on this painting and the other one I'd been working on (which was actually a painting of tulips, not dahlias - I'd remembered it wrong when I'd written that review) where I had used masking fluid. And apparently masking fluid (which is a goopy white or yellow liquid you brush onto the places where you want to preserve white, and which you then rub off once you're finished painting, to re-expose the white paper underneath) has an expiration date. It's meant to be temporary. It's not meant to stay on watercolor paper for months at a time. It looks worse on the tulips - the masking fluid didn't come off at all, and is permanently stuck to the paper.

I mean, I don't have to finish the painting. In fact, as the artist, I get to decide when it is finished. So I decided it was done and moved on.

But the point is not that I "gave up" on this painting. It's that I moved on. I didn't give up on all painting.

And to help me not be "afraid to paint" I am trying to show my paintings on this blog - and on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest - even when they are still in progress. A lot of times I don't want to show something until it's already done, so that I know it'll turn out okay and be worth showing off. But I am allowed to make mistakes, I am allowed to show my works in progress if I want to. I don't have to be afraid, to think that something has to be perfect to put it on display. (If I had to wait until I felt amazing about myself to leave the house, I'd leave the house a lot less frequently than I already do.)

So in that vein, here is my latest "in progress" -

Two watercolor paintings, in progress - as shown on my Instagram @afrownfe (Andrea Arbit)

I started these a long time ago. I made the compositions on my computer for two similar rose paintings. I traced the compositions onto watercolor paper. I put down a wash of green. I started putting down the dark brownish-purple layers. And then I stopped, and set them aside, and worked on other things for awhile.

I took them out again the other day. I didn't staple them to gatorboard, so they're wrinkled anyway. I also made sure not to use any masking fluid, because I knew I wouldn't finish them in time to take the fluid off (and I was right). If it takes me ten more years to finish, so be it - I'll take them out every once and awhile and do a few more layers. I don't have an excuse this time for being unable to put more effort into it at a later date.

But really the goal is for it not to take that long. In college, for my watercolor classes, I made a full sheet size watercolor painting every 3 weeks or so. These two are half-sheet size each. It shouldn't take me long if I actually sit down and do them and put in the work. I need to get in the habit of setting aside time for art every day. It's the only way this shit gets done.

Here I Am

Here I am, starting another blog. This time, my main goal is transparency. I want to write honestly. I want to show you - whoever you are - who I am and what I am working on.

I am an artist. I design patterns on my computer, I design digital compositions for watercolor paintings, weaving patterns and photographs together in Photoshop or Illustrator, and I use those designs as a basis to create watercolor paintings. I take photographs, especially photographs of flowers. I also turn these photographs into colored pencil drawings: lines of vibrant color cutting through harsh black paper, a mask of something decorative or feminine or pretty over something mysterious and brooding. I love layers - layers of imagery, multiple steps of process, layers of meaning. I think a lot. I get stuck in my head. I procrastinate a lot. I get scared.

"When Fear Gets in the Way" 15"x11", watercolor on paper
I started this in 2013. Originally, it was supposed to have a lot more layers of paint, so that the dahlias would look like real dahlias and less like "dahlia abstractions." But I could never bring myself to finish. I was too worried that I would mess up the parts that were looking good so far, that I couldn't make it look any better than it already did, in its half-finished state. So I called it "done," stuck a title on it, and signed the corner. In Victorian Flower Symbolism, dahlias stand for dignity. This painting is my dignity: half-naked, half-exposed. Fear stopped me from bringing it to the level I wanted it to reach.
(It's available for purchase, half-finished, as-is, if you're interested. I'm doing a great job selling this, right? Contact me: afrownfe-at-gmail-dot-com.)

I am also a writer. I come up with incredible fictions - whole worlds, whole families, whole characters - and they dance in my head while I sleep, while I lay in bed trying to sleep, while I'm wide awake, walking through my day. I plot. I organize. I outline. I reorganize. I reoutline. And once and a while, I write. I string words into phrases, into sentences, into paragraphs, into chapters, into novels. And I edit those novels, and reread them, and re-edit them, and send them to a select few to read and offer commentary on. I delete entire pages. I move entire chapters around. I start over from scratch from another character's point of view. I debate sending queries out to literary agents, to publishing houses. I search for self-confidence. I haven't quite found it yet.

I am a woman, a human, a Caucasian-American, a Michigander, a feminist. I am a wife, and - as of about a month ago - a puppy parent. (More on our new puppy Ginny in another post, I'm sure.)

Ginny, at about 3.5 months old

I am (occasionally, temporarily) a substitute teacher. (It's not fun, but it helps pay the bills. A little.) I graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 2010, and, five years later, still have almost no idea what I want to "do" for a job, for a career. I earned a BFA degree with a double major - Watercolor and Graphic Design - and a minor in art history. I earned university and art department honors. My cumulative GPA was 3.97 (my one B+ was in a Jewelry studio class). I graduated when I was 21 years old, in four years - although I had enough credits to graduate after three years, if I'd wanted to stop. (I had a full tuition scholarship. I hadn't wanted to stop.) I loved school. I always have. I love to learn. I taught myself to read before I entered Kindergarten. I still read a lot - my goal this year is to read 85 books in 2015, and I'm currently on track/ahead of that goal. I have a Goodreads account, where I post reviews of everything I read.

I have a store on Etsy, where you can purchase some of my artwork. I also had a website, until a year or so ago, for a custom stationery design company I called "Invites by Andrea." The website is down now - I felt like I wasn't reaching anyone with it, that it wasn't worth the annual cost of $100 to maintain it, to pay for the domain name, to pay for web hosting - but I'll still design stationery for you if you want. I have several hundred brochures all made up listing prices for invitation designs and printing out save-the-dates. I passed a lot out - at bridal shows, mostly - but I still have two boxes that never left my house. Brochures collecting dust, waiting for me to figure out how to be entrepreneurial enough to properly use them. Most of my business was (and continues to be) word of mouth. My customers are family members, and friends, and friends of friends. It's fun work, it's a little extra cash, but it never turned into what I'd imagined it might when I first started out, when I first signed up for that website, when I paid money to set up a table at a bridal show, when I got all those brochures printed.

A watercolor sign I painted to hang at bridal shows to attract traffic to my table. It normally hangs from the wall on three binder clips balanced on nails in my "office" (a spare bedroom in my house). I can see it while I type these blog posts.

I had a blog I was using for a while - "Ideas by Andrea" - which was set up as a compliment to my invitation design business. There, I posted images of stationery projects, and DIY ideas, and color combinations. I got a surprising number of hits - 58,000 total pageviews - but no one ever commented on my posts, or followed the bread crumbs to my stationery website to contact me, to commission invitations for their event. They took my ideas and left. I made no money.

And that's fine. Life isn't all about money. I like the idea that someone found something useful on that blog, that my thought of pairing jade green with coral - which I did for my own wedding, in 2011 - was a thought shared, or absorbed, or repeated by others because of pictures I posted, because of words I wrote. I suspect that's all this blog will do, too. Strangers will stumble onto it, stay for a page, make note of something I say, and move on, without me ever knowing the extent of my impact, without me ever making a buck.

Jade green ribbon and coral roses adorning our delicious wedding cake in 2011

But see, last time, I made the blog for other people. I offered suggestions for what kinds of parties they might throw, what sorts of decor they might employ, what cool invitations they might like. I didn't know who was reading it, but I wrote it for them anyway, those anonymous people Google tracked for me, those numbers that showed up on my stats page. This time, I'm going to write for myself. I'm going to explain things that are important to me - things that might not even be art related, political things, maybe, or social justice things. So that other people might understand me or the artwork I create or the stories I write, if they wished to, but also just for my own records, so I remember how I saw the world and my place in it back when I was twenty-six years old. I'm also going to show current projects I'm working on - and be totally transparent about the emotional struggles that go along with them. I'm going to show you who I am; I'm going to show myself who I am.

I think this will translate into fewer pageviews, but - hopefully - deeper connections. Maybe my readers will want to follow my blog because they relate to my struggles or appreciate who I am. Maybe they'll want to purchase a watercolor painting from my Etsy store if they've seen on this blog the steps it took for me to create it, the blocks I had to overcome, the time and effort that went into it. Maybe they'll still just read one post (or skim one post - let's be honest, I'm verbose and the average Internet peruser does not care for verbose), and move on, just like they did on my other blog. But if my main goal is to write for me, to be authentic and transparent because my most important reader is myself, the myself of the future that will come back to reread these entries to remember my life, the myself of the present who is reading them now, as she writes them - than any other positives that come out of this blog will be icing on the proverbial cake; not the cake itself.

(Although, I always did like the icing the best.)