In July of 2022, Brianna Grier died falling out of a moving police car while having a mental health breakdown. Since Brianna passed, I have been heartbroken for her twins and family but also reflecting on my struggle with mental health. Mental health needs compassion and empathy, not police and punishment. The brunch strokes are purposeful, but I completed them with empathy in mind. I want to keep the composition simple but filled with meaning. The color theme represents vastness and loneliness, but also kinetic energy found in warm orange tones.
I am an art teacher with a master’s degree—trained by brilliant professors who believed that art could do more than decorate walls. I offer safe spaces for teenagers to grow—nourishing soil where their imaginations can take root.
And yet… I am assigned to hallway duty.
This is compulsory education, after all.
So I sit—posted like a sentinel—watching young lives stream past.
“Get to class,” I say with a smile and a nudge.
The system wants attendance; I’m hungry for presence.
Armed not with a whistle or clipboard, but with a pen—
my scribble’s soft insurgency.
The hallway stretches out like a geometric hymn.
Columns and corners chant structure.
Teenagers swirl past—half-formed galaxies of limbs and laughter—
their orbits chaotic, their gravity pulling time forward.
I begin to draw.
Not their tardiness, but their motion.
A shoulder. A blur of sneakers.
A tilted head chasing freedom.
Feet flickering like seconds.
Each mark a pulse.
Each smudge a breath.
My paper becomes a seismograph of seeing—
trembling gently through the mundane.
This isn’t about making art for a frame or a feed.
It’s about refusing to leak away in the fluorescent hum of obligation.
It’s a quiet mutiny against the clock.
I do this on long car rides, too (passenger side, mind you).
Letting the lines grow wild, jagged, and unapologetic.
Not for polish—
but for presence.
This is how I remember I’m still alive.
Still growing.
Still watching.
Still choosing to see.
Because sometimes mental health looks like
a piece of scrap paper,
a moving pen,
and the simple, sacred act of
marking time with wonder.
Kierkegaard said we undersand life by looking back, but we must live life forward. On a trip to the Chicago Art Institute with a group of students, I penned the students behind me and then I penned the rapidly moving images I saw through the front window of the bus . I still do not understand life except that perhaps it is full of energy and art and love.
This is the largest canvas thus far for me. In progress!! Multiple projects are in sway with this baby of mine. Feel free to check the link for updates on all the moving parts, including video and still shots with hidden treasures added in between (little surprise pop-ups of newness) along the way. https://photos.app.goo.gl/eNiH1mwVbFHaAyAZ9
Here's some music that inspires me, along with links to listen live or on replay.
Phenomenal! - DJ OTB for your creative journey. I love getting lost in the music while I dig deep to paint or create my soul expression. Much gratitude to all those out there who inspire me every day.
https://www.mixcloud.com/djtruebrit-otb/
https://www.mixcloud.com/djtruebrit-otb/a-journey-in-house-afro-melodic-progressive-chill-13072024/
https://www.mixcloud.com/djtruebrit-otb/a-journey-in-house-afro-melodic-progressive-vibes-13072024/
The lake was busy with light, the grasses busy with wind, but the boat sat quiet against the shore. There is a gift in this tension: to be held still while everything moves, to be carried without effort, to find rest in the very heart of motion.
Many beginnings.
Beginning 5.
Frederick was contemplating geese flying south for winter and dreaming about moving to Florida.
* Starting is easy, it's the middle that is often a muddle. And I won't even mention the endings. Here are some beginnings for children stories that flitter through my head.
https://www.instagram.com/p/COu0fRFhvBo/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Unfortunately, I broke up and separated with my girlfriend prior to Christmas. If there is an upside, it is that moving by myself has led me going through old work I’d packed up in various boxes - not opened for years. This is just an abstract biro doodle (+ markers for colour) I doodled, while working in a stupid telephone interview job in my early 20s.
A predator reduced to bone but not to silence. The body is gone, yet the motion remains — jaw open, spine curved, still moving through water that no longer needs flesh to carry it. This is not a fossil resting in sand; it is a hunter that never learned how to stop.
The ocean keeps its shape alive. Instinct outlasts life.
Some creatures don’t die — they continue.
A cartographic representation of the experience of moving to a new city in a foreign land. This work, dubbed as 'Introspectionism', provides the viewer with a snapshot over time of the inner workings of the process of the strange becoming slowly more familiar and the foreign becoming Home.
I can't believe October is already here, and it's startling how fast time is moving. I shouldn't be up this late, but I wanted to make some art, especially given how today has been (8-3:15 'in school,' 3:15-10pm doing homework). The honest answer is I just feel down. I can usually phrase things better but my brain is fried. Everything is non-stop, the time I have to breathe seems to get shorter. Anyway, it's 11pm, I should get to bed.
A Rhino energetically plays an electric guitar with flames blazing from the headstock. The rhinoceros stands on a moving car, evoking a sense of wild, rebellious energy.
Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975)
Shostakovich’s contemporaries do not recall seeing him working, at least not in the traditional sense. The Russian composer was able to conceptualize a new work entirely in his head, and then write it down with extreme rapidity—if uninterrupted, he could average twenty or thirty pages of score a day, making virtually no corrections as he went.
But this feat was apparently preceded by hours or days of mental composition—during which he “appeared to be a man of great inner tensions,” the musicologist Alexei Ikonnikov observed, “with his continually moving, ‘speaking’ hands, which were never at rest.”
Shostakovich himself was afraid that perhaps he worked too fast. “I worry about the lightning speed with which I compose,” he confessed in a letter to a friend. Undoubtedly this is bad. One shouldn’t compose as quickly as I do. Composition is a serious process, and in the words of a ballerina friend of mine, “You can’t keep going at a gallop.” I compose with diabolical speed and can’t stop myself.… It is exhausting, rather unpleasant, and at the end of the day you lack any confidence in the result. But I can’t rid myself of the bad habit.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #shostakovich @masoncurrey
Another wobbly neighborhood. Focusing on color and composition and leaving behind perfect perfective and detail. Ultimately, putting fun first in my personal work moving forward.
Moving away from your hometown inspires a multitude of emotions. By taking inspiration from the atmosphere that the game Life is Strange and Steven Universe creates, I hope to convey a sense of longing and nostalgia that makes us all a little more united in our loneliness.
#14 Inktober 2023 Prompt number 26 "Remove" - I drew this picture during the #inktober event for an individual's artspace on magma.com (the word prompt to draw was "remove" for day 26). I came up with the idea to draw an RPG warrior battling a giant mosquito during his adventure. He is using OFF brand mosquito repellent spray to remove the enemy from this path (but he took damage and later is removing a Band-Aid from his arm). Drawn directly on magma.com live using an iPad pro (no pressure sensitivity and no Ai).
Trying to make sharp shadows without having everything blend toghether. My goal is to convey the warm, pinkish sunlight on the first day of spring, and light is not something i have given enough care to earlier. Removing colors from a photography is an effective way to get an idea of how sharp shadows actually are!
Late night (really late) watching the beautifully made silent film The General by Buster Keaton. I stopped it here when the bad guys climbed up on a moving train fixing for a fight! I used 6b pencil on Procreate
I feel like I haven't made any actual art in a while, let alone actually said anything about anything. It's been a long week, in both good and bad ways. First off, I was accepted into college, and then (for lack of better words) I accepted my acceptance to that school (I'm officially a Blue Demon!). Gymnastics is shut down, which I feared would happen, due to the rising cases in IL. It'll be closed at least until after the holidays, which scares me, but it is what it is (I wish people would just follow guidelines and wear masks)... I've been frustrated lately, mostly artistically. I go through times where I'm not satisfied with anything, nothing is good enough but all I want to do is create. There are a few larger projects I've been working on in the background, two for school and one personal. The personal one I haven't had much time to work on, but I'm hoping I will over the next few days (since I'm on break.) So yep. Lots of moving parts right now. Anyway, I hope everyone has a safe Thanksgiving!
