A preview behind the collection of original paintings by Alexa Johnston that will be available on April 14th at 10AM PST.
This collection "A Soft Place to Land" was created over the past few months and embodies what it feels like to hold both joy and sorrow, elation and fear, happiness and despair in the same breath.
This group of paintings began with the working title of 'a place for both' as I was, over the last few months struggling to find the words for the dichotomy of feelings I was feeling in my soul. As someone who takes on energies of my surroundings and the world around us it is a gift and sometimes a struggle to sift through the many layers of emotions we are all carrying around daily.
In the fleeing seconds in between what felt like days of heaviness I would find great joy within my life and my surroundings. A walk at the beach, a coffee with a friend. I knew there were good moments in between. I would work my way into my studio and create. There in the early days of spring I would find joy and create space to accept and acknowledge my sadness, frustration with the world, heaviness.
And within that space something beautiful happened, I realized that my sadness was not what keeping me from being whole. It was what made me, but not in a negative way. I needed to let those feelings flow through me to access my joy, underneath the weight was light. Grounding in my space, my surroundings, my paintings, had allowed me to create
a soft place to land.
VISIT THE COLLECTION
I'll leave you with a beautiful poem from Mary Oliver which I return to time and time again.
I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the open, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred-
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered,
split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all
the moisture gone.
It's like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by
itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.
- Breakage, Mary Oliver
Photography by Sophie Vino
