Karina Bania & the Creative Process

Karina Bania is an artist whose work I've pinned without realizing it—which I feel bad about, but I haven't yet figured out a workaround for other people's sloppy pinning habits. Source things properly, people! Luckily I stumbled upon her work (again) and did a little reading up on her background—turns out she's a self-taught painter with a degree in business. Her work, to me, is very visceral. It's about color and composition and abstraction. I like that. I like it for the same reasons I was drawn to the Jack Ramsey piece I have, 'Sunslide'.

And while I'm usually not one for inspirational quotes, something Bania had to say in one of her recent blog posts really resonated with me: "I make mistakes constantly. My mistakes are what generally lead me to some of the best places my work has gone and definitely some of the most enjoyable moments of working. But many pieces go nowhere. Many times I leave the studio with nothing to show for it but the act of creating. And that is enough. Everything doesn’t always have to be 'something.'"

I think I take that for granted constantly in the city, and more generally on the internet and social media. Things don't have to be "something." Things don't have to be finished. Despite the fact that never before in my life have I felt like so many eyes are watching me. There's always this potential for that one thing you tweet or share or even simply 'like' to somehow come to define you in one way or another. And it's so easy for people to engage with one itty bitty facet of yourself that you've put out there and get the wrong impression. It feels like every part of yourself that you make available online (and what isn't online?) needs to be polished. And finished. And the best.

But that's—hopefully—not true.

Hopefully we can still be three-dimensional and still be creative while making mistakes and tweeting the wrong things and Instagramming less than perfect pictures and realize that we're not declaring Who We Are, realize that we're not done, even though it can seem that way. So maybe it's archived for all eternity (unless the Internet breaks?), but we have to have the opportunity to learn from those moments we share that are less than perfect, and have the freedom to go nowhere but not be defined by dead ends.