On Showing and Hiding

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to show my art.
To push it out into the world feels, at times, like standing under an uncomfortably bright light.
My work has always felt private, a quiet dialogue with myself, and yet when I share it, it’s as if I’m turning those thoughts inside out for anyone to read.

It’s not that I crave praise, or sales, or recognition.
Most days I think of myself as quite secure now, steadier than I’ve ever been.
And yet there is fear. Of what?
Exposure? Judgment?
Or maybe the strange discomfort of simply being seen.

I’ve been creating “things” for as long as I can remember.
And I’ve lost so many of them—left behind in studios, uncollected after exhibitions, hidden away in garages until they quietly disappeared. I thought that was fine. That they were just objects.
But lately I feel as though pieces of myself have been lost too, earlier versions of me scattered in time, erased by my own reluctance to hold them close.

Art is the one way I feel I can commemorate my own existence. I am awful at taking photos of myself and never feel the urge to do so.
Through these collages, I pin down moments, thoughts, fragments of experience, giving them form before they slip away.
Yet a part of me still tells me that it feels wrong to invest in myself in this way.
That doing something just for me is indulgent.
If I’m not seeking praise or riches, then why bother?

Maybe the answer is simple:
It matters because it matters to me.
Maybe art doesn’t need an audience to have worth, but sharing it might be another way of keeping hold of myself. A way of refusing to disappear.