all hail pentimento

i’m a digital artist, & i do tons of changing layer to layer.  i wanna talk about pentimento. it’s the juicy, delicious core of any composition, the body-oddy-oddy of the work. that’s where the warmth & fullness come from, like a pretty backdrop or a natural dapple of light & shadow.  this understanding of underlying layers, crucial in digital art (or any art!!), offers a powerful metaphor for understanding the human experience.

we should remember that people have layers too.  how we look is the final version: our clothing choices, our social media presence, how we carry & present ourselves. but the gnarly hidden layers are what truly shape us.  even the stanky dank layers exist, & as we correct our mistakes, the landscape of our pentimento changes too.

this concept extends beyond the canvas.  for example, my best friend, fluf, a computer-loving autistic fluffy kitty addict.  his outer layer might seem all slick with ricc owens and other designer clothes, but underneath, there’s a whole lot of pentimento, a complex history of trauma & love.  to only see the surface is to miss the profound richness of his experience.  

it’s the same with all of us.  we are all thicccc works of art. we are delicious stacks of pancakes, layers upon layers of experience, some dank, some wack, some downright odious. but our pentimento is the fullness & warmth of who we are.