Things That Look Better Unsupervised

June 15, 2026

Some things are better when no one tries to manage them.

Not because they become prettier.

Because they become more real.

I have been thinking about this since we went to the Vancouver Art Gallery. There was writing about what inspired Emily Carr’s work, and I liked that part. Not just the finished work on the wall, but the life around it. The places she returned to. The things she kept looking at. The parts of the world that got under her skin and stayed there.

What stayed with me most was the writing about the mountains. How she thought about painting them with accuracy, not just as scenery, but as something vast. Something that needed comparison for size. Something that had to feel as large as it was.

I liked that.

The idea that an artist is not only painting the thing in front of them. They are trying to tell the truth about the size of it.

That made sense to me.

Not because I am painting mountains.

I am very clearly over here drawing women with long necks and goggles.

But I understand wanting the work to hold the actual size of something. Not the literal size. The felt size. The part that does not fit neatly inside the polished version.

That is what my eye goes to.

The real thing before it becomes performative. The moment before someone fixes their face. The strange angle. The awkward hand. The expression that slipped out before it was managed.

If I were a photographer, I would be drawn to candid shots. Not because posed photographs are bad. They have their place. I have stood on enough stages to understand the power of the arranged image.

But the candid tells a different truth. It catches the in-between. It catches the part that did not prepare a statement.

That is the choice.

Not polish. Not performance. The real thing before it gets managed.

I choose where the work ends.

That is not hesitation.

That is my eye.

Life has an edge. People have edges. Moments have edges. The over-managed version might look cleaner, but it usually tells me less.

I know that from bodybuilding.

People see the stage version. The tan. The suit. The makeup. The body under lights. The version where every detail is planned, polished, sprayed, glued, curled, bronzed, and judged. A very normal hobby, obviously.

That version was real.

But it was not most of it.

Most of it was me at the gym with no makeup. Hair pulled back, when I still had hair. Tired. Doing the same movements again. Eating the same meals again. Training when it was boring. Training when it was not cute. Training when nobody was watching and there was no reason to make it look impressive.

Nobody clapped because I packed my food.

Nobody handed out trophies for doing another set on an ordinary day.

Nobody saw the 99 percent.

And that is the part that actually built the thing everyone eventually saw.

The stage was not false. It just was not the whole story. It was the final image after years of unphotographed repetition. The lights made it look sudden. It was not sudden. It was mornings, meals, laundry, discipline, boredom, soreness, and doing it again because that was the work.

The finished piece is like that too.

So is the posted photo.

So is most of life.

The polished version gets the attention, but the unglamorous part carries the weight. Cleaning up. Sitting alone. Starting again. Doing something ordinary for the hundredth time. Wearing no makeup. Being slightly annoyed by your own responsibilities. Wondering why the laundry has such a strong work ethic.

When you know that, the quiet does not feel like failure.

It just feels like life.

That is part of what I want my work to hold. Not the overly managed version of a woman. Not the polite version. Not the version arranged to be easily consumed.

Women are complex. People are complex. There is the face someone shows, and then there is everything happening behind it.

That is why the goggles interest me.

They cover the eyes. The place people usually look first. The place people scan when they want to decide what someone is feeling, what she means, whether she is soft, difficult, pleasant, available, angry, tired, kind, fine.

Put goggles over that and the usual reading does not work the same way.

The woman is still looking.

But you cannot access her as easily.

Good.

That feels honest to me.

There is the face. There is the barrier. There is the stare behind it. There is the thing you can see, the thing you cannot, and the thing you are trying to guess because people are nosy and mostly convinced they are perceptive.

The long neck matters too. It exaggerates the space between the head and the body. It makes the woman feel elegant, strange, exposed, and not quite built for ordinary proportions. Which, honestly, relatable.

The asymmetry matters.

The exposed line matters.

The part that is still becoming matters.

I am more fascinated by what is still happening than by a piece that has been polished until it behaves.

My work is finished.

She isn’t.

That is the difference.

The painting is done. The woman is still mid-thought, mid-motion, mid-becoming. She has not been managed into a clean little answer. She has not been arranged into someone else’s comfort.

A part of my own honesty shows up in the retro vibes too.

I was born in the 70s. That decade is not a trend to me. It is the decade that brought me into this world.

The retro thread runs through my art because it runs through me. The colours. The shapes. The mood. The women. The oddness. The glamour that never quite behaves itself.

It has been there for as long as I can remember.

What feels different now is that I am no longer separating parts of myself into different compartments.

For decades, I was constantly moving between versions of myself. There was the leadership version. The bodybuilding version. The mother version. The creative version.

All real. All true. But often kept apart.

Bodybuilding had a stage version and a behind-the-scenes version.

Leadership had a public version and a private version.

Motherhood had its own version too. Of course it did. Motherhood tends to take the largest room and then leave socks in all the others.

Creativity was always there, but it often lived around the edges. Tucked in between responsibilities. Brought out when there was time, which is a hilarious concept invented by people who do not have five children.

The older I get, the less interested I am in maintaining those divisions.

I am not trying to present the polished version anymore.

I am trying to live as the whole person.

The same person who led organizations. The same person who raised five children. The same person who stood on bodybuilding stages. The same person who loves fashion. The same person who notices strange faces, good greens, bad symmetry, dramatic glasses, and women who look like they know more than they are saying.

The same person sitting in a studio drawing elongated necks and asymmetrical faces.

Those are not different people.

They never were.

They are all me.

Maybe that is why the women in my work look the way they do. They are not symmetrical. They are not perfectly resolved. They are not offering themselves up as an easy read.

They are carrying something.

Some of it is visible.

Some of it is not.

Just like people.

Just like me.

The polished version has never been the most interesting part.

The part underneath is.

Some things look better unsupervised.

I think I am one of them.