This space is a work in progress :). I set up in my garage for the warmer months because I love painting outdoors with the fresh air and natural sunlight. My dog loves to hang out with me while I work. I'm working on this space and will add more images as I go. C ![]() I've been painting for years but I've never had my own studio. I've always painted in temporary spaces, corners of my room, kitchen or porch at a rental house where I had to mind the walls and floor. I couldn't throw paint around the way I do when I'm so deep in the process I don't even remember where I'm at. But now I have my own home and this huge space that is all my own. It's something I've been dreaming of all my life. I have all these huge canvases too and I hardly even know where to start. I've always painted for my own enjoyment, I've exhibited some and done a few commissions but mostly I just paint for me. I've been meaning to set up an online shop for a while but I've been so busy with my YouTube channel I've hardly thought about it. But now with this space I can create anything. It's so exciting. I always get extra creative when the leaves turn and the air cools with the feel of early fall so I imagine I'll have more art to share soon. Here are a few pictures of the first painting in my new space. Many of my works have a poem to go with them and here is the one inspired by this piece. Up close we'd see for miles The vast empty In between - The layers Of light, of depth, of darkness. Petals falling Feels like rain No question All is here. The way we know It has been All this time And then at once You are beside me And we are (decidedly) Enough. Charity
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I thought it would be fun to do a little behind the scenes of one of my favorite works. I like this painting a lot because I can use it as a profile picture when I’m not in the mood to have a regular photo up. I painted this painting very spontaneously with no reference or real plan. It’s not perfect but I like it. I had painted the background as it’s own piece but didn’t find it super interesting so I painted a face over the original abstract. I sketched it freehand, you can see pencil lines as I didn’t stick to the sketch while painting. I wasn’t thinking about myself or anyone in particular when I created the image or if it even looks like me though I claimed it as a self portrait later. At the time I was painting abstracts in a sketchbook then taking them out in the sun while they were still wet and photographing each piece from all different angles. I’d pick my favorite spot or detail and share the close up with my friends online, usually with a little spontaneous poem that I’d write after choosing the final image. When I was invited to exhibit my work digitally at @m.a.d.s.artgallery I needed high resolution photos that could be shared on a big screen, the original painting was a photographed like most of my others with the old iPhone so I had to get out the painting 3 years later and photograph it again with a real camera. I personally prefer taking pictures with my phone because I can quickly crop and upload to share without a lot of hassle. The real camera means so many extra steps before I can share that I seldom post the pictures I take but I’m getting better about that. The final pics are the photos I took 3years later for the exhibit the painting is dry so it’s not quite the same effect. I included some never before shared images from the original 2015 iPhone shoot in different lighting from other angles. I call this piece both “Self in Blue” and “Charity of Thought” which was the title of a poem one of my best friends Sandy wrote for me when I was 15 or 16. I hope you all enjoy this little peak behind the scenes I’m thinking of sharing a few more of these.
Self Exploration Any understanding of the universe outside of ourselves begins with a deep understanding of the divine mystery we hold within. I shared this message in a post on Instagram exactly one year ago today and I thought it would be nice to share these thoughts here as well.
About 2 or 3 years my daughter pointed out to me that she was pretty sure I had Prosopagnosia, I’d never heard the term but it’s also called “face blindness”. I talked to my mom and found actually it’s inherited. I spent much of my life feeling like kind of an idiot or unkind because I could never recognize people. If I see someone every day in the same location I’ll know who they are but if I run into them some place unexpected I won’t know them at all. I’ve hurt a lot of peoples feelings that way, it was never intended. I remember people by their clothing style, where I usually see them or by their walk, or voice, never by their face. I have trouble following movie plots because I often can’t tell the characters apart. Some people have a mild case but it turns out mine is pretty severe as when I step away from a mirror I don’t even remember my own face. I realized once I made this discovery why I also got a bit obsessed with self portraits when they invented the selfie camera. As I spent most of my life not really remembering what I looked like I never thought much of my looks. When I was able to look at my own face in a camera and take pictures I felt like I was looking at someone else. I went through a phase when I would photograph myself and then try to draw or paint the picture from memory without looking. The images never quite looked like me but they looked like my idea of myself. I don’t know if my life would have been easier if I’d known this sooner or if it even really matters at all. But I try harder now when I meet people to specifically look at details about them that I can remember later if I run into them in a different location so I don’t hurt their feelings. I still don’t really remember what I look like and I got bored with self portraits a few years ago once I felt I’d studied myself from every angle. But I love the little art works that came out of these experiments so I do plan to circle back around to this art style again soon. I have tons of work like this somewhere in my storage space with a lot of other art experiments, but these are among my favorites. #Prosopagnosia #faceblindness #selfportrait #art #experimentalart #self I refuse to fear The me I see In you Or the you I see In me. This painting is called ~ Kundalini Rising Accepting the beauty of unfinished work and calling it done. One of my favorite recent paintings and poems. Last summer I had a commission I was working on, two paintings featuring the colors of my friends’ wedding for them to hang in their room. I've always worked with my own color inspirations so it was a stretch for me to work with a requested palette. I began by painting in my usual style with the requested colors and I honestly made a big mess. The colors didn't blend well, they were turning to mud, I was getting frustrated and wanting to just quit, but my friends had been generous and spontaneous enough to pay me in advance and I knew I had to find a way to create something cool that I would love and they would hopefully at least like. So I took a huge palette knife and scraped all the paint off the canvas so I could just start all over from scratch and yet the paint I had removed left color on the canvas, color that I liked much better than the painting I had undone. It looked fascinating, not like any of my previous work. I decided that the paint residue would make a fantastic under-layer for the new painting but I wanted to add some more texture to what I thought would be a great background. I put some more paint on the canvas, worked it around with my palette knife into something I hoped would work well enough for the background and took off to do something else. The next day I came back to work, looked with fresh eyes at my unfinished painting, all scraped off and recklessly redone with no thought to how it should look as I expected this to be an unseen layer in a greater work, and I loved it! I loved the unseen layer. I loved what I had begun, accidentally, haphazardly thrown together in all my frustration and hope for something better, it was good as it was. I just couldn't paint over it. I hung it on the wall and moved on to the other canvas thinking I'd come back to this maybe later and rework it... but later I came back and I couldn't. I fell in love with the unfinished work. It was perfect in it's imperfection, it was beautiful in it's incompletion. The part of the painting that I never planned for anyone to see, became one of my favorite works. Charity Here is a little glimpse of my recent solo show at M.A.D.S. Art Gallery : www.madsgallery.art Solo exhibition "EXPLOR-ART" Mad project 36h 4 Charity Janisse Starting Monday, July 16 www.facebook.com/madsmilano/videos/ www.ioarte.org/eventi/Mostre/Explor-art-mostra-personale-di-charity-janisse/ www.gigarte.com/madgallerymilano/news/19399/explorart.html www.evensi.it/explor-art-mostra-personale-charity-janisse-gallery-moda-arte-design www.eventbrite.it/e/biglietti-explor-art-mostra-personale-dellartista-charity-janisse April Design Art 2016 Featuring Paintings "She Wakes" & "Indigo Rising" By Charity Janisse
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CharityThoughts Archives
August 2023
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