About a year and a half ago I was working a job that I absolutely despised. And at this job that I absolutely despised was a coworker that I disliked even more. He was a loud older man compared to his younger counterparts and he always seemed to have a negative spin on everything. At the time I was a cigarette smoker and I was sitting outside on a break enjoying a cigarette when all of a sudden said coworker was all up in my space with his hand out. My headphones were on and blasting so I didn’t notice him approach nor hear him ask for a lighter, I just saw the suggestive hand under my face.

I took off my headphones and asked him what he wanted. He asked for my lighter and when I handed it over to him he made a comment under his breath about “people and their music.” So we started getting into it and I told him I was a musician to which he replied asking me, “does music even exist if no one listens to it?” I promptly replied, “yes.” He was not owed any other explanation besides the decency of that.

Art is created whether people interact with it or not. Part of the process can be sharing but it is not a prerequisite to something being qualified as “art.”

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A post shared by Arielle London M.A. (@ariellelondonma)

I recently created Greek Isles, an abstract acrylic painting that gives me all the feels. Artists are notoriously hard on themselves and critical of their own work; I am no different. But when you hit a grand slam, you know it in your heart. In baseball, the ball goes out of the park and so the W is clear. In art, sometimes a win (which is when you express exactly what you wanted to through a given medium) is not so obvious, and in other moments you can feel it from the first brush stroke on the canvas.

I knew as soon as I began Greek Isles that I was creating something special. I was in the zone. Greek Isles has elements of my traditional style of painting as well as other experimental aspects. I didn’t set out to create a painting that reminded me of my time in Greece, I just did. The intention was to paint for the sake of painting. I started with a color scheme and freestyled from there.

I am happy with the results. I do not share all of the art that I create, but I am glad to present Greek Isles to you on this day of Show & Tell (a.k.a. every day internet culture). I hope if you are not on an island in Greece right now this painting can bring you there, if even just for a fleeting moment.