A Year Down, A Lifetime to Go

Hello & Happy September!

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, but been doing some goal setting & planning and thought today was a good day to jump back in.

So, September 14 will mark one year since I left full time employment to focus all my attention & creative energy to building LAR Art Studio. Gosh time moves fast!
This week, I am taking time to reflect on the year & envisioning what crazy beautiful things the next year may hold. I am writing down the things to celebrate, the opportunities for growth, the losses, the gains, dream collaboration projects & my goals for year 2. Through this process I’m realizing that I’ve got so much to be thankful for.  I don’t know about your, but when I’m in the grind… going, going, going… I can sometimes miss the undeserved gifts I’ve receive along the way that provide just the fuel needed to fight for my dream another day.
When it’s all said & done, it has been a good first year for LAR Art Studio.  I am officially a creative living in Houston, TX. Everyday in some way my work includes photography, painting, mixed media, teaching, writing & speaking.

Studio 12 at Hardy & Nance Streets Studios is where my creativity often blooms.  Most days you will find me there sipping on a cup of coffee with music playing as I create work that reflects what life has revealed to me about healing, freedom, and beauty found in everyday experiences.  Acrylics, pastels, charcoal, paper, & encaustic wax are my mediums of choice. However, I am constantly learning new techniques to use in my work to tell the stories embedded in my heart.

Life has taught me that we all have creative potential and the need to encounter beauty. As an artist, I believe my call is to create opportunities for people to encounter beauty through the work of my hands & the spaces I cultivate for them to tap into their creativity.  This work fuels me and gives me so much life. It is such a delight to create art that draws people into spaces of vulnerability, hope, complexity and freedom.

I am incredibly thankful for the privilege to do this work and for the community partners,  supporters, and buyers who help me live this wild and precious life wholeheartedly. I anticipate with great joy what’s yet to come…

Check out LAR Art’s Studio at www.larartphotography.com

Love Well

It it has been awhile since I’ve written. Lately I have been doing a lot of listening, pondering, seking, grieving & most of all sitting with my anger. However, today on the first day of July, I want to share this hope with you.

Here’s to hoping today is a day we…I…choose to tap into love–
allowing love to empower us to speak words (with our mouths & actions) that don’t kill, terrorize and/or deny the the humanity of another.
Here’s to hoping love will spark our individual & collective imaginations & compel us to do the work of dismantling all systems & walls that privilege one group of people over another/others. systems that rig the game & make it damn near impossible for us all to play– to LIVE, thrive & win.
Here’s to hoping that in the midst of all that pains, angers and grieves me today, that I will never loose my ability to see, name & believe that love is as strong as death & hate.

As a person I follow on Facebook, Ryan A. Hawthorne, wrote this morning, “Love deeply, vulnerably and righteously.” For the sake of our world & yourself. Love well today.

harmony

she become what she had always been.

the other caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her strange becoming.

they wanted her to return to the shell,

that had once surrounded her.

but she had wings.

she had tasted the perfect harmony of becoming & surrender.

This is a quote I adapted by Dean Jackson and that I used as inspiration for the piece featured above.  The piece is titled, “Harmony.”  It was created using acrylic paint, paper & wax on canvas, and is featured on my LAR Art Photography website today.

faith

“Trust is a lot easier when you quit worrying about what could go wrong & remember how much you’re going to live no matter what happens.” –StoryPeople

I am not sure if it is a lot easier, but there is something to those words.  I have found that remembering the hellish dark times I’ve made it through does give birth to a certain amount of trust, peace & strength in the now.

Yet & still, there is always this lingering presence of doubt & awareness that I am not entitled to a life without pain… my heart can & will break again. Most days the best any of us can do is keep trying… keep fighting to keep some flicker or ray of light in sight.

And most days that is enough.

“The light that’s in your eyes / reminds me of the skies / that shine above us every day-so wrote a contemporary lover, out of God knows what agony, what hope, and what despair. But he saw the light in the eyes, which is the only light there is in the world, and honored it and trusted it; and will always be able to find it; since it is always there, waiting to be found. One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith. ” James Baldwin

bloom.

I was reminded in the silence this morning, that flowers don’t compete or compare themselves to what’s around them… they just bloom.

flowers lean into the light & bloom to their fullest potential.

joy is found in surrendering fully to your own blooming… the process… and remembering we each have our own unique way of becoming. allow the journey to awaken & strengthen the soul.

be persistent in your dreams

“If you are persistent in a dream God has called you to, even failure will work for good.” –Melissa Douglas, Artist

I love being in the studio.

over the past two weeks, I have been waking with a burning desire to be in the studio and pick up right where I left the day before. each morning, I find myself anxious to see how the paint from yesterday dried & add more layers to the canvases filling my studio loft.

I love it.

these days I am reworking & in most cases totally transforming paintings I did when I first started painting. it’s a stewardship & necessity thing, but it is also a need for that early work to bear the markings of this new season of life & growth for me.
one nice surprise has been seeing the markings I considered mistakes or total bombs the first go round, be the very things that help to create just the right textures & foundations for what is being created now.

here is a glimpse…

click to view and purchase art by Lanecia HERE

from fear to new births

a glimpse of the piece “Fully Alive,” I recently created on a 24″x36″ canvas.

my heart is full after the past few weeks. so much goodness. to marry my best friend in a place my heart loves was one of the best experiences of my life.

settling back into routine and figuring out next steps without being totally overcome by fear has been a bit challenging for me at times. there is such a thin line between being paralyzed or being motivated by my fears. now that I am living life as a professional creative/artist solely, I find myself walking that line for a period of time each day.

yesterday was my first full day back in the studio. decided to get to work on some large abstract canvas paintings I have been adding layers to for a couple of months.  it was good.  it was exactly where I needed to be.

earlier last week I attended a panel conversation at the Menil, “The Influence of Gandhi & Dr. King on Hip Hop,” and a number of the ideas spoken stirred me to think more deeply about the work I do, as well as the life in which I live.  the work I am creating now is my continuation of that conversation and the truths revealed regarding the complexity and beauty of the human experience.  last night I finished one of the pieces.

each stroke on the canvas was a sentence about vulnerability, fear, need for communion & hope, each layer a chapter on the goodness & messiness of the soul fully alive.

today, I sabbath.

I remain still so I can know and listen for direction.  I trust that no matter what is done today or left undone today, I am enough.

as for tomorrow though… I look forward to time with paint & canvas and returning to the grind necessary to turn my dreams into plans.

tomorrow I will…

fly

free spirit:
someone or something who lives by their own wishes & is unconstrained by society.

the journey awakens the soul

2014 has been one crazy beautiful year! It has been a year of being intentional about loving others & myself well, choosing to be rooted here in Houston, allowing myself to be stretched & taking risks on me as I have taken some pretty big faith leaps.  Each day provided opportunities for me to learn new things about love, life, courage, forgiveness, release & truth… just to name a few.  Let’s just say, the journey of becoming all that your core knows you have been created to be truly awakens the soul. 2014 has also been a year of meeting & connecting with many creative hearts & minds in Houston that inspire… Kendall Hanna, of Kendall Hanna Photography, is definitely one. This week I got to be in front of her camera, for some author photos to go with a few upcoming writing projects I have on my plate for 2015. It was absolutely delightful.  She is brilliant at her craft & makes it fun.  Looking forward to sharing more from our time together as the year unfolds. Here are a few of my favorites for now…          

long night

this has been one hell of a long night USA, one hell of a long night.

Yet I am not afraid of the night; I have never feared the dark to the point that I have to rush the sun to rise.

So I am choosing, mostly in silence, to sit in this long night to see what needs to be seen and name what needs to be named, so that when the sun does rise I will have a sense that there is justice for all, that bodies matter… that black bodies matter to be more specific, & that our tears have truly made the ground fertile for institutional & systematic change in this country… United States of America.