Portal Process
Portal was first created by taking acrylic paints and throwing them onto the canvas and then smearing and scrubbing the paint in while wearing women’s house gloves—those rubber gloves people wear to do the dishes. There was something about wearing these domestic gloves that women in my lineage have worn for generations while cleaning, and expressing this visceral feminine rage.
In this process, the white portal began to appear, and the next step was taking white acrylic paint, a sea sponge, and water and washing the canvas with the water and paint mixture as an act of care for these feelings —to deeply honor them & to release years & lifetimes of held in pain and anger from the way women are treated.
After that, this empowered feeling came through and I had the urge to create something like the scales of a mermaid. This process was a slow and steady reclamation of my own power, of things that had been taken from me on a soul level, and in the end this piece ended up feeling really serene. My favorite thing now, is that the painting is big enough that it feels like I can jump through the portal at any time.