The Two Truths About Florida

My Florida series is about how to hold two truths at once. It’s the happiness of the family loading up the car for a long drive to Florida to see relatives we only saw once every couple of years. It’s enjoying the beauty of the beach, the flora and fauna and the sunshine of the Sunshine State.

It’s also the fact that that joy was chronically temporary as it related to Florida. I grew up around substance abuse in my home, but that was put on hold when we stayed with my grandparents in Tampa. For a kid growing up in poverty, the welcome reprieve was everything considering that Florida was the only vacation we ever took. But the palm trees and sea breeze always faded away as the long trek back to Missouri, back to normal, began.

It’s because of this (and because I was born in Florida) that the state holds a certain mystique to me. Even though only a tiny sliver of my childhood took place there, Florida has outsized importance in my mind as the place where the hurt of being incredibly poor could be put on pause. If only for a bit, crashing waves and sandy feet were more present in my reality than a mercurial parent who was frequently drunk and angry.

The concept of holding two truths that convey opposing sentiments feels relevant in a world that is more complicated than we’d like to admit. Spending all day at the beach is fun, but a sunburn isn’t. A trip down to Florida could be obsessed over for months, but the fact that it had to end made it sad too. As an artist I’m feeling this conflict a lot recently as I make work championing female adolescence while a fundamental right to privacy, safety and health care is taken away for political purposes.

So Florida for me is about finding joy, even when that joy isn’t guaranteed to last. I’ll be releasing a new series of paintings on July 15 dedicated to the beauty I’ve always found there in the beach, the water, the landscape, the people and more. These pieces are bright and happy and filled with all the parts of Florida that form positive memories from my childhood. 

But of course, underneath that happiness is another, more complicated truth that comes with it.