Confessions From an Artist Preparing a Solo Show

Hey, hello there, friend!

If you know even a little bit about me, or have been following my art career for a while, you probably already know this: for me, a solo show is never just an exhibition. It turns into this whole world that slowly takes over my everyday life;) It becomes an experience, a theme, an emotional deep dive, and eventually a temporary obsession that takes up so much space in my brain that I can barely separate myself from the work anymore.

If I could spend the rest of my life building immersive concepts, creating installations, painting collections connected by meaning, and turning galleries into spaces people can physically move through and experience, I absolutely would. Because at some point it stops feeling like you’re just “making paintings.” It starts feeling like your life’s work.

But here’s the part people don’t really talk about enough.

Preparing for a solo show completely takes over your brain in ways that are hard to explain unless you’ve been through it yourself. From my experience, I basically stop functioning like a normal person because my entire mental system gets swallowed by the exhibition.

At the end of installation today, after weeks of planning, painting, organizing, labeling, building, carrying, fixing, retouching, and mentally mapping every wall in the gallery, we realized half the materials were missing.

Not because nobody cared, and not because we weren’t trying hard enough, but because eventually your brain gets so overloaded with details that basic functionality just starts shutting down. At some point during a solo show, your mind honestly feels like a browser with forty-seven tabs open. You forget simple things you’d normally remember without even trying.

You walk into a room and immediately forget why you went in there. You stop talking about anything unrelated to the exhibition because your entire brain becomes occupied with color palettes, wall spacing, titles, lighting, edges, flow, pricing, hanging systems, paint drying times, and whether one specific painting needs to move two inches to the left.

And then there’s the dangerous part every artist knows way too well: Last-minute paintings.

You’re exhausted, the show is basically installed, everyone around you keeps saying it’s enough, and suddenly your brain goes, “...okay but what if we made one more?”

So instead of resting like a reasonable person, you start another painting fueled entirely by iced coffee, adrenaline, and questionable decision-making.

And somehow those paintings sometimes end up becoming your favorites, which honestly just makes the whole cycle worse.

Another confession?

I slowly disappear from social events before a solo show, and it’s never really intentional or dramatic. My energy just starts turning inward until everything becomes super focused.

This past weekend, I literally removed all the cat stretches from my couch just to force myself to do something else, solo show unrelated.

And I love this whole process. I love the transformation that happens somewhere between the first sketch and the final installed wall.

Because somewhere inside all the chaos, exhaustion, missing supplies, paint-covered floors, disappearing social life, emotional overload, and complete mental takeover, something meaningful gets built.

Not just the exhibition. You do.

And maybe that’s the real reason artists keep putting themselves through this over and over again.

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Color Your Life!

Drica