Back in the Pleistocene Era, when I first started blogging, there was a cute convention used to explain extended absences. The structure was a vague apology acknowledging the unusual reticence, then reassuring readers the author was back and had a good reason for being otherwise occupied, followed by an image of an ultrasound, a brand new baby, a new pet, a surprise wedding photo, or in less optimistic cases, a broken appendage / natural disaster.

So let’s see if I remember how it’s done.

Hello, lovely blog readers. I’m sorry I’ve been away so long, but I am back! You see, I had a pretty good reason for my absence…

I was just having one of my all-time greatest dreams come true.

Last month my first solo exhibition of paintings opened in Manhattan, The Nature of Being, presented by chashama in a pop-up gallery on Madison Avenue. Despite being in the gallery every day for the run of the show, I still can’t believe this is an actual reality and not just some elaborate, exquisitely beautiful dream.

Chashama is an amazing non-profit organization that partners with the building owners of unused or under-used spaces to give artists places to create and present new work. I am the second artist to show in the storefront gallery on Madison Avenue, which I believe used to be a men’s suit store that moved across town. I love the initiative of inserting art into publicly-accessible places, bringing art to the community, and giving artists the freedom to present their work however they’d like. It has been incredible to work with such a nurturing, supportive organization, and I am simply thrilled to have had this opportunity.

I will be writing more here or on my studio blog about the overall process, conceiving and proposing the exhibit, what I learned about myself as an artist and a person through this experience, and what an encouraging and wonderful time it has been meeting people, getting feedback on my work, and letting my paintings finally communicate with the public the way I want them to. Spoiler alert: pretty much dream come true across the board.

One of the biggest things I want to keep in my heart is what it has meant to have such astronomically supportive friends and family throughout this process. I literally never could have made the paintings, trusted myself enough as an artist to even apply, gotten through the exhibit planning, organized the opening reception, or honestly, even tried to share my art with the world without such extraordinary people believing in me and doing everything they could to help me, push me along, and come by to see the exhibit and say hello. I have a tendency to retreat from the world and into my own mind, where it’s easy to feel alone and isolated from other people, and the past few months have shown me with abundant clarity how important it is to reach out, trust people, and share experiences with an open heart.

This whole experience has made me so optimistic about the future and so confident in the path I am setting on it’s a little overwhelming. I keep tearing up with gratitude.

We’ll talk much more about all these things soon, but in the meantime there are still three more days of the exhibit if you’d like to come by to see what I’m talking about in person. And I have the drafts of about a hundred other posts going in my mind, so we’ll get to sorting out the rest of the world too.

(View more opening and exhibition photos here on Flickr).