I Will Open Up

Details:

18.5x18.5" / 47x47cm (framed)

Oil on Wood Panel

2023

All works are carefully packaged with protective materials and shipped with tracking and insurance. Free shipping included in this artwork.

Statement:

Around 2022, I began to realise that vulnerable art had the power to genuinely speak to and move people. Strangely, that realization frightened me. I had always created simply because I loved creating, without considering that others might see themselves in my work or form their own emotional connection to it. Imposter syndrome set in, I just felt like one small speck in an enormous world, so hearing people describe my work as “powerful” was difficult for me to accept.

When I conceived this piece, I was at a point where I wanted to become more vulnerable in my paintings. For years, I shared that side of myself through @miccamoo, while my oil paintings were reserved for the more lighthearted, imaginative and colourful parts of me. Whenever deeper meaning entered my paintings, I often felt uncomfortable with my own vulnerability.

I Will Open Up represents the moment I decided to stop resisting that vulnerability and embrace it; to allow myself to put my feelings openly into my work.

The piece became my acceptance of a role I believe artists inevitably share: being a conduit for human connection through the creation of art, and allowing something deeply personal to become meaningful to somebody else.