THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

I’ve been thinking a lot about the process of the butterfly. I watched a video the other day of a sped up transformation process, where a caterpillar is simply wandering along the way, and then like lighting, bolts into a vertical post and its outer shell splits, slides off like a snake skin, turns into a chrysalis, and then dies to itself to become something entirely different. 

I can’t help but think I’m going through the same process. 

At the end of Covid, I reluctantly moved back home. I accepted it was where God was sending me so I didn’t fight it, but I didn’t want it either. It too was a lighting strike moment where I was sent into the environment from which I came to die to myself over three years. Today, is yet another phase where I find myself ‘eating’ my past projects in order to turn into something else. 

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I began the concept for Sugar Coated in 2018. I’d been in the thick of activism and I was in a rather desperate place to try and wake up the world to the chaos that I was seeing festering right underneath the veneer of American life. I felt a burning desire to lure unsuspecting people into an brightly colored exhibit that was bittersweet and hilarious… using humor as the perfect way to get people to swallow truths they didn’t HAVE to pay attention to- mainly the demise our or agriculture, the injustice against certain groups and the monsters leading our nation. 

Fast forward to today, the final months of 2024, I have held onto Sugar Coated as my showcase concept. It’s strong, admittedly, but I have changed so much that I see bitterness in myself when I look at each thumbnail sketch. 

I finished “Caramel Apeel” last night, a beautiful piece about Apeel, Bill Gate’s novel yet ridiculous and harmful attempt at saving grocery stores money by extending the shelf life of fresh produce by coating it in gelatinous cancer causing goo made from seed oils. I then immediately started on “Crookie Monster”: Puppeteering our Earth chip. It’s funny and cute and may be my favorite from the painted concepts, yet I’m becoming unamused by the snakiness of it all. If anything, I feel like people are exhausted with the social and political conundrums of our time, and simply want beauty. Maybe it’s just me, but I doubt it. 

As I let the cookie monster blue dissipate from my brush into the water, I picked up a small canvas and decided to paint- just to paint. I used the left over shades of blue slowly drying on my palette and the cookie colored bronze and tawny. I painted a face. Nothing special per se, just a face. Doodling I’d almost call it. Easy. Fast. Natural. 

I set it on my desk leaning against the wall, right next to an unfinished Crookie Monster. For the rest of the night, I sat there listening to astrology and having an undeniable feeling that the face is more interesting. The loose brush strokes and the way the complimentary colors blended in certain places and then became their own colors again in different places. It was… INTERESTING. Not because of some clever cerebral commentary, it was just… interesting. 

This is the moment I had to sleep on last night as I contemplated absorbing the Sugar Coated concept into myself, to reembrace my natural talent and become what God designed me. Not a commentator of the world, but a contributor to the world. Not in an attempt to be special, but in a genuine desire to express what comes most naturally. 

This is an intriguing process considering the events of the last week; My Trew Love facebook and all affiliated friends, social groups, and ad accounts got hacked and deleted. Last month I traveled to LA for a wedding only to discover that I have become broadly more conservative over the last three years and felt a distinct lack of resonance with my friends in California anymore. That was compounded exponentially when I told them I was voting red.

It’s been an undeniable realization that since I moved home, I am now someone different. I feel like I’m shedding all aspects of my Los Angeles self which is confusing and liberating all at the same time. 

There’s power in being able to walk away from things, yet there’s a melancholy in me that knows that Sugar Coated in its glorious entirety may never come to life at all. 

Yesterday my daily Step said “I do not need to be special to be unique”. In one subtle but fell swoop, like gears shifting into place, I began seeing that many of the Sugar Coated pieces were laughing at another’s world view and from some angle, could be seen as laughing at their pain. 

“Trew Love”.. does poking fun of other’s confusion and detriment even fit my brand anymore? Quietly, God spoke “No” and another wave of grief settled in as I further detached from my former identity. 

I can’t help but wonder still where I’m going. I was so certain at one point. So sure of myself. Maybe that’s exactly the issue. Maybe I was becoming too sure. Too rigid in my understanding of my path. 

Like the caterpiller however, I find myself itching to release what doesn’t fit me anymore. Like an old torn jacket that was once my favorite, now has to be left for the birds. 

Today, even as the raindrops hit my window and the clouds cover the sun, I feel like a new day has dawned. I’d written now over a year ago about how I’d meet the canvas with no concept to interfere with what comes out, and yet it is only now that I’m ready to do so. 

The full moon in Taurus this Friday promises that we should expect the unexpected, and this is certainly that.

It may in fact be that Trew Love, as an identity, was just yet another stepping stone to knowing my true self. She of infinite expressions, also known as Adrienne. 

With Love and Truth, 

Trew Love

Also Known as Adrienne