X Major
Pines
ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
I think of these two pieces as being very deeply connected. The one big difference between them is my state of being when each was made. Pines was created about five years ago, before I had really fully realized what I was doing or who I was. Sometimes, when we are just so deep in our own circumstances, the ‘aha’ moments come in disguise. This image was one for me — the pines behind my home were my life vest until I could believe in myself. They promised me that one day my creative impulses would be integrated into my life in a way that make sense.
X Major, on the other hand, was created after a sometimes-painful period of self-realization. I envisioned it in conversation with Fox Frazier-Foley’s collection of poems, Exodus in X Minor. For the last several years, I had refrained from doing much work by hand, and gradually something inside me had begun feeding me the lie, “I am not worthy of being a real artist. Real artists create with their hands and don’t hide behind a screen.” But after reading the text and discussing its underpinnings with the author, I found it very evident that my own creative ship had come in. The piece took shape effortlessly: it was simply time.
These two works together, and the experiences they represent, remind me that to create a piece of art is to connect to the Source, which is to be real, to be vulnerable, to even fail if necessary. To be brave enough to fail. You have to be able to look your piece in the eye and tell it you aren’t afraid of what internally it may represent, that you actually love it no matter what. Because the piece is a mirror and a storyteller: it is your truest wish. When you’re real with your art, you are expressing self-love, and that is sometimes a very difficult thing to do.
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Trista Dymond is a Detroit-based visual and installation artist who hails from Kentucky and upstate New York. She is currently focused on cultivating the art of stillness, and often finds it in the most unexpected environments — including The Heidelberg Project, where she works as site manager and resident artist.
