I AM: A Painting in the Liminal

October 6, 2025 1:36 am

Painting in the liminal part of the creative process. This painting, I AM, is alive with thresholds. The background layers of red and blue grind against each other like two worlds in collision, their boundaries blurred, their textures uncertain. Across this chaos, black vines stretch upward, sprouting green leaves and blossoms—a signal of life emerging where it should not, in the space between endings and beginnings.

Painting in the liminal is natural for me. I often am between a moment and its expression. The scattered letters—A, M—float like fragments of language trying to become whole. Together, they whisper I AM, a declaration of existence in the in-between. The letters do not form in one place; instead, they surface here and there, fractured yet connected, inviting the viewer to assemble them. It is in this act of noticing, of piecing together meaning from fragments, that the liminal reveals itself.

Liminal space is the threshold, the pause between what was and what is to come. It is the doorway, the hallway, the twilight. I AM rests in that tension. It is both chaotic and ordered, decayed and blooming. The painting refuses to choose a single state—it holds them all at once, pressing us to dwell in the discomfort and wonder of transition.

Painting in the liminal is just part of my process. In many ways, art itself is liminal. When I paint, I do not know where the process will lead. I linger in uncertainty, letting colors bleed and shapes emerge, trusting that something will appear. I AM embodies that practice. It is not a resolution, but a threshold, a place where questions are more important than answers.

Perhaps that is the invitation of I AM: to stand at the edge of the known, to recognize ourselves not as fixed beings but as travelers in motion. In the liminal, we are reminded that transformation is not only possible—it is inevitable. And in that moment of becoming, we too can claim the words: I AM.

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