Interview by Erica Eriksdotter

Hey guys. Here is a great interview with me by Erica Eriksdotter, a friend who I met on instagram! 
I always enjoy answering questions from another artist, maybe you will like this too. Check out the full interview here.

Let’s talk about your studio. Girl, it’s money. How important has it been to have a studio outside of your home? What is the difference? I have a studio in my own home which serves me well at the moment since I have a day-job, and studio space is hard to come by in the gray landscape of Washington DC.

Ha! I love my studio so much, it feels like a huge blessing. I loved working from home, but having a studio has let me buy more things in bulk, and be messier and also segment my time better. Some weeks I hardly go to the studio, others I basically live there. Every time I walk in the door I can’t help but smile and breath it in, I am very aware of how special it is, how precious this time in my life is and I am making sure to enjoy the hizzle out of it!

What’s your goal with your art?

I have had so many goals! When I started my goal was to create something good enough to get me online, and noticed by people I admired. Then my goals became about creating work that I personally am proud of. This has been a constant goal: for me to feel good that my paintings are something that I would want. Once I had a design professor tell me that he met his idol one day, and the Idol asked him for a sample of his work, but the professor didn’t want to show him any of his work, because he didn’t think it was good enough. He told us this story to bring home the fact that you wear your work on your body like a tattoo! And you have to be ready to show it around, all the time, so you better be proud of it, and ready to let it represent you. That is my goal, to have that kind of integrity with my work.

What do you need to paint and while you’re painting? Music, tv, coffee, wine? Silence?

No silence. I like books on tape (for a while there it was only Harry Potter, all the time, it was like my safe place to paint). Now any book, music (I like Metronomy station on Pandora), or I even play movies or shows in the background sometimes if I don’t have to think too hard that day.

Find my dresses at Graniph Japan.

Are you a lover of routines or do you prefer to go with the flow?

FLOW!! I can’t ever, and I mean ever stick to a routine. One of the hardest, most important reasons that I had to be successful working for myself is that I can’t have any one else’s routine on me. I feel like its a too tight jacket and I kinda can’t breath just thinking about it. I have always been this way, in grade school, when I was a small child, always. Of course I have always been told to change this about myself, I was called, even by my own family, a scatter brain, a loopy loo, and warned against my inability to follow a plan that isn’t mine. One of my greatest joys in life is maturing and for me maturing, and evolving as a person means accepting those things that are integral to yourself and instead of fighting them, diving in and letting them help propel you upwards and much higher than you could have ever gone without your unique perspective. I try to set up some rules in my life to help me meet other’s expectations. I ask everyone to email me anything they want me to remember, and if they don’t email me (this took a while for some to embrace, they seemed to think that telling me should be enough but I would just say “did you email me? No? Well then it didn’t get in my brain, its your own fault for not respecting my system.”) I do keep a schedule for galleries or commissions, but I just can’t fulfill everyone’s needs, so I do my best and thats that.