The Deeper Thread Connecting My Artwork Over Time

I’ve been sitting with a strange kind of nervousness lately. Not because I’m making completely different work. But because I’m starting to realize I don’t want to talk about it the way I used to.

For a long time, I described my work through skill, process, observation, learning how to see. And those things are still true. But the more I look at my work over time, the harder it is to pretend any of those things exist outside of context.

And what I’m starting to realize is that my work has probably always been about context. About shifting it. Reframing it. Using it to make us reconsider our assumptions about what we’re looking at.

And often, that means engaging with power. I don’t mean in an abstract or dramatic sense but in the everyday sense. For example, the way context shapes how we interpret relationships, roles, labor, authority, care, visibility, and expectation.

And in my newer work, I’m exploring this more directly through spaces that are meant to feel safe. I didn’t always have language for that. I’m only just starting to name it now.

I’m curious if you’ve ever experienced this with your own work too, where you realized there was a deeper thread connecting things long before you had language for it.

Has your work ever revealed something about your values or attention before you consciously understood it yourself?

 

Hey there! 👋 I’m Carrie.

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For a long time, I avoided describing my work in political terms. 

I told myself I was focusing on form, technique, and letting people connect the dots. If I stayed in process, I believed I could keep things from feeling too charged. But I don’t think that’s actually possible anymore. Or maybe it never was. Because when I look back at what keeps showing up in my work, I can see a pattern.

I keep changing or reframing context in ways that ask the viewer to reconsider what they assume is normal, neutral, or invisible. And power is often embedded inside those assumptions. I don’t mean power as some huge abstract concept. But power as it actually moves through everyday life. Through relationships, expectations, authority, care, tension… Through what gets centered and what quietly disappears into the background.

And what I’m also realizing is… this isn’t actually a new direction in my work. It’s a new way of describing what has already been there.

When I look back at my earlier work, especially my Anonymous Women series and my caregiving and motherhood-based work, I can see now that I was already using context to shift how certain experiences were viewed.

Whose labor gets recognized. 

Like the women in my Anonymous Woman series who were photographed in the 1940s for the novelty of their new job roles (mainly cabbies) but whose names were not recorded in those same archives.

What kinds of work become historically important. 

By using materials often labeled craft or female.

What kinds quietly disappear into expectation. 

What happens when care exists as both tenderness and structure at the same time.

My work around motherhood includes embroidering Savor Every Moment into used cloth diapers to speak to the overwhelming messaging mothers should always be grateful and positive about their caregiving experiences.

It also includes art where I’m drawing my daughter’s drawings to speak to her spontaneity while also acknowledging the tightness and perfectionism that can surround the parenting experience.

I was asking viewers to reconsider visibility.

I just wasn’t describing the work through that lens yet.

 

Have you ever looked back at older work and realized you were exploring something long before you consciously understood it?

I’d genuinely love to know what themes or questions keep resurfacing in your own work over time.

 

The work was never actually neutral; it was just being framed through process.

And being willing to name what has already been structurally present in the work… that’s part of what’s changing for me now. That’s also where the nervousness comes in. Because once you start naming things more directly, you lose some control over how they’re received. People don’t just see the work, they interpret what they think the work is saying.

I’ve been very comfortable, for a long time, being understood in a certain way. As someone who teaches, who helps, who makes learning feel accessible. And that still matters to me deeply. But I also feel a responsibility now to be more honest about what has been shaping my attention all along.

The relationships between authority and vulnerability. Between structure and care. Between what is visible and what is assumed. So I’m in a bit of a transition.

Not away from teaching or from process but toward something more explicit, more honest and more clearly named.

When I started exploring this more overtly in my newer work, I was terrified to show anyone.

I’m not even sure what I thought would happen, I just knew I felt absolutely terrified, so I started small. I shared it with one friend first.

Someone new, but clearly respectful of me and my ideas. Someone I felt safe with. And nothing bad happened. No lightning came to strike me down.

So then I shared it with a few artists I know. People I’ve worked with before, people I trust. And again… nothing horrible happened.

 

I think a lot of artists quietly experience this.

That fear of showing work before you feel fully ready.

So I’m curious: what helps you feel safe enough to share your work with other people?

 

That gave me enough confidence to start applying to opportunities here in Calgary where I can actively produce and show this work. And even engage with the public around it.

And now I finally feel ready to talk about it here with you. As of this recording I have three pieces in progress and some collage work ready but I aim to have multiple pieces completed before I share them in greater detail (I recognize both the truth and irony of this in context of today’s conversation. In some ways, I continue to dip my toes into the proverbial waters.).

I’m sharing this for a few reasons.

I’ve always shared my creativity and mindset journey with you, and this feels like the next layer of that. But I also want to name something more personal. I want you to see what it can look like to slowly step into discomfort.

To share your voice before you feel fully ready. Because your work is still valid even when it feels risky to say out loud. And I hope my experience helps normalize that a little, so we see it less as a personal failure and more as part of the process of growing as an artist.

A lot of what I’m noticing right now has less to do with confidence in the traditional sense.

And more to do with how my nervous system responds to visibility. When I feel more regulated, I can stay present with complexity. I can tolerate being misunderstood. I can stay with my ideas without immediately softening them. But when I feel less regulated, I default toward safety. Clearer roles. More neutral language. Less direct naming of power or politics.

I’ve started to understand that safety isn’t just psychological, it’s physiological too. It’s shaped by cues of connection or threat in the environment. There are states where I can think clearly, reflect, and communicate with nuance. And there are states where my system shifts into protection instead of expression.

I’m also curious whether other artists notice this connection between emotional safety and creative visibility.

Do you notice your ability to share or speak openly about your work changing depending on how safe or grounded you feel in your life?

 

I’ve noticed this in my own life. When I lived in Texas, my body often felt on high alert. And when my husband was laid off and we moved three times in five months, my nervous system was also in a constant state of stress.

I think part of why I’m able to create this work now, and start to speak more openly about it, is because I finally feel safer. More regulated. More resourced. And I’ve also had to practice more uncomfortable conversations over the last few years, which has helped me build more capacity for this kind of visibility.

 Inside Artist Strong Studio and here on YouTube I talk a lot about learning being uncomfortable. About how making new work requires risk. I still believe that. The thing is, the discomfort never actually disappears, it just changes form. It evolves as you evolve. And right now, this level of visibility is the discomfort for me.

This also connects back to my quiet activism article, which I’ve made sure to link below. Because I’m realizing more and more that art is one of the ways I speak up. It’s one of the ways I share what I believe, and finally, how I engage with the world around me.

I don’t shout from rooftops and I’m not about slogans or loud declarations. Instead I use my art and consider attention and reframing, through asking people to look again.

I’m still in the middle of all of this.

I don’t have a perfectly clean conclusion yet,and probably never will, but I wanted to say it out loud before the work starts speaking more clearly on its own.

And I encourage you to explore the ideas simmering in your heart, because your ideas and your art matters.

As always, thank you so much for watching. I’m truly grateful you choose to be here and take time out of your day to watch videos like the one today. Please subscribe if you want to stick around, I’d love to have you.

Remember: proudly call yourself an artist.
Together, we are Artist Strong.