April Perin Wogenburg

When Canvases Fall Silent

My entry into painting was an unexpected relational inheritance. In Indonesia, I fell in love with an artist who was slowly shifting from painting toward music. As his canvases fell silent, they moved closer to me. While his mixes filled our home, my hands began to move across the surfaces he left behind.

For a long time, I didn’t show anyone my work. I couldn’t bear the sight of them: not interesting enough, not beautiful enough, not worthy enough. How could I shame the simple movement of color on cardboard, while I lead my clients through retreats that burn through every veil of illusion—using the weight of our darkest shadows to ignite a sense of absolute, playful freedom?

I felt that shame because I viewed myself and my paintings as products of some "elevated" intellectual self. Only when I gave up wanting to be "something," and wanting the paintings to be "something," did I finally begin to love them. I began to cherish them like children, whom we adore regardless of their wuthering moods.

The result became irrelevant. The paintings simply speak the truth of a momentary state of consciousness and/or atmosphere waiting to be captured. Fear of abandonment, death, the collective hunger for breaking taboos, limerence for a toxic lover, blueprints of scarcity, or the vast vibration of love—each state leaves its trace. The hand knows what to do.