Tending Gardens

I've been thinking a lot about the way I’m asked to perform myself. Paint. Post. Repeat. Like an endless treadmill. I've been looking at it all a little sideways, watching the quiet creep of self-exploitation masquerading as visibility. Like I’m feeding the churning motor of some sleek productivity machine a little piece of my body every day just so it doesn’t forget I exist.

It’s strange, isn’t it? The way we’ve been taught to peel off pieces of ourselves to be offered up for nothing more than metrics. Oil on canvas becomes flesh on screen, and every painting feels like another small sacrifice to the glimmering, unsated god of engagement. It’s grotesque if I let myself think too long about it—how we've all been tricked into seeing our lives as content, our grief as rawness, our joy as a brand identity. We are offering ourselves on the altar of “maybe someone important will see it.” Follower counts like phantom limbs. Ghosts that moan but do nothing.

But who’s looking? The thousands of vanity galleries on Instagram that demand way too much money from you in exchange for their vague interest? The “residencies” that want $50 and a sob story just to reject you with a MailChimp template? Vanity showcases, pay-to-play promises, dressed as relief but built on the backs of artists who are already barely staying afloat. I’m pretending that it doesn’t feel extractive. That this version of the art world isn’t devouring its own creators. I see too many opportunities that are really just polished little scams dressed in gallery drag—false sanctuaries dressed in white walls and grant language, quietly siphoning hope from emerging artists like gasoline from a stranded car. These places talk of community but mean capital. They want your trauma, your identity, your urgency, your body, and your hunger, but only if it looks good on their feed. I’m not sure if we agreed to this arrangement or if we caused it.

So I’m thinking about retreat. Not in a coward’s way, but in the way animals do when they know the forest better than the city. A quiet corner where I can share what I’m making, what I’m living through, and who I’m becoming, without needing to translate it into a story that loops well or a caption that sells. I want something slower. More honest. A space where people arrive because they care, not because they scrolled. A place that can hold both the finished painting and the rotting compost of the thought that birthed it. Life updates, studio messes, little notes about the world I’m building. That feels more honest. More sustainable.

Underneath all this, beneath the irritation and overwhelm, I feel the gravity of something quieter, something slower. This in-between space—it’s no longer just a waiting room; it’s becoming its own landscape. And maybe that’s part of the season I’m in—this liminal place that keeps asking for slowness even when the world demands acceleration. There are days where the stillness feels like sinking, like being left behind by a current you’re not even sure you want to keep up with. But I’m beginning to see that this, too, is a practice. Learning how to grow while being stomped on. How to breathe when the air is a putrid sulfuric cloud. I used to resent the stillness. Thought it meant failure, stagnation, rust. But now I’m starting to see it as a strange kind of practice. A liminal devotion. How to slow down without collapsing. How to grow underfoot, unnoticed.

It’s not easy. Sometimes it feels like trying to paint in a storm shelter while the government drones circle, while my immigration status whispers threats in my ear like a soft demon: you shouldn’t be here / you can’t leave / you don’t exist / don’t you dare be visible.

But here I am, remembering that I’m more than what I can produce.

Life is loud right now. There’s chaos in the system, and tension in the waiting. But every time I come back to the phrase “tend to the garden you can touch,” something softens in me. It reminds me that not everything has to be big to be meaningful. That I don’t need permission from the art world to make something beautiful. That home is a brushstroke, a quiet meal, a shared laugh in a borrowed kitchen. Mel and I are holding each other through it. I can’t overstate what her love has meant—what it is—in this moment. The way she sees me when I feel invisible, the way she holds the vision of our future even when the present feels like chewed meat. We’ve been dreaming in real color lately. A little house on the coast, with space for art and music. Ducks and gardens. A place to build something not just for us but for others who’ve also been carved up by the industry and are still somehow creating. A collective? A refuge?

Until then, I’m moving through the noise one painting at a time, in the small pauses between odd jobs and visa dread. Creating something that’s slow and honest. The latest piece I’ve been working on is a little feral, a little quiet. It smells like wet stone and singed hair. I think it might be about survival. Or longing. Or maybe it’s just what happens when you keep making things through force of habit.

Tend to the garden you can touch.