Paint Away the Sadness

Welcome, welcome, welcome!

Stacey smiling at the camera — Hi, I’m Stacey!

Or as my friend Katey cursed me with hearing, “Welcome In!”

“It’s incorrect grammar! Why do people say that?”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ve ever heard people say that.”

“You’re going to hear it everywhere now.”

And the curse began.

Anyway, this is my website for all my creative exploits. I like to make stuff—paintings, drawings, essays and short stories, websites and apps, food…

One little watch face, one giant rabbit hole

How we got here

The whole reason I started trying to come up with this website is because I finally made something I want to publish to the app store—a cute aquarium watch face—and like everything else in my life, it started me down a rabbit hole that somehow prevented me from finishing my original task. Another ADHD symptom takes the reins leaving me grabbing on as I bounce around choking on all the dust.

I came up with the name back in 2020 during the COVID lockdown. Trying to concoct TikTok videos was another obsession, and I didn’t like my Instagram name for my painting-focused account, TheToysAreAlive.^*

So, I thought of PaintAwayTheSadness and started making time-lapse videos of my mini paintings that I started doing when I opened Pinot’s Palette San Bruno.

The studio had only been open for about five months before COVID took over the world. Although it apparently allowed nature to heal and dolphins to return to the Venice canals, it also clogged my little studio pipe dream. We were forced to close for over a year.

Apparently, I make hobbies into jobs

I love baking and making candy so I turned that into a failed candy business (yes, I also know how to make marshmallows, truffles, caramels, taffy, etc. from scratch). Then came the studio, and after that, trying to go viral on TikTok with my stupid recordings of paintings.

They were—and are—so much work to film and edit.

I say “were / are” because I haven’t decided if I’m done with that yet.

It’s really not fun to film, but so satisfying to watch. But it’s either record the whole thing and be in editing hell or try to remember to stop and record interesting parts as I go along.

Neither is fun.

I JUST WANT TO SHARE MY ART WITH PEOPLE.

New plan: stop overthinking it

I’m having the same problem with this stupid website text. I kept trying to make it concise and meaningful and not too wandery, but then I realized I was turning this into a job too. I decided to just allow myself to write whatever I want without censoring myself.

Maybe that should be the point of this website.

I just wanted to tell you a little bit about me so if you ended up here from looking at the privacy policy I’m required to post somewhere before I can continue with the arduous task of publishing my watch face to Google Play, you’d have some idea (probably more than you wanted) of the maniac that built the little watch face with the swimming fish and little bubbles.

Ideally when my website is done, it will be a home for all the stuff I make—paintings, writing, weird little web toys, games, apps, watch faces, whatever obsession tends to possess me next.

And of course, social media links and Patreon.

But, for now I’m trying to put something here that my neuroses can accept just to get past the public-privacy-policy gate.

A few other things I wanted to share

I also didn’t want this to be a giant wall of text, so I dug up a few more things I wanted to share.

FYI, I have anxiety around drawing people because they don’t come out very well. So during COVID, I tried to at least dip my toe into this pool and paint some photos of my family that I liked. I copped out and avoided painting faces, but it was still better than I expected.

This is a painting I did of my son wearing his favorite Pikachu hoodie as we looked down at the beach at Mussel Rock in Daly City. I’m still amazed at how three-dimensional it looks—his little body really stands out against the background.

My company at the time was running some photo contests to try and keep everyone engaged and they asked for photos of what people were doing in their spare time.

I submitted this photo of my painting.

And I won!

The prize was just a cloth mask with the company name embroidered on it and my painting photo in the email blast, but I was beyond excited that I had actually won something with my artwork.

A painting of the artist’s son in a yellow Pikachu hoodie overlooking the beach at Mussel Rock — 8 × 10 · Cliffs at Mussel Rock

A painting of the artist’s husband and son looking into an aquarium tank at Monterey Bay Aquarium — 5 × 7 · Monterey Bay Aquarium

This success gave me the confidence to do this painting of my son and husband at Monterey Bay Aquarium (tiny bit of face, but mostly shadow).

I am pretty proud of this painting too. The cloth looks so clothy, don’t you think?! His little blue hoodie looks so r/AccidentalRenaissance to me.

Okay, back to the watch face

Anyway, that’s probably enough about me just so Google will let me publish a watch face. I couldn’t bear to have the privacy policy be the only page on my website.

If you want to see more of my work, you’re welcome to check out my Instagram or TikTok. I have some much older writing at chinesewarrens.com and I’d love to get back to writing stories about my family some day.

And, I’ll check one more item off the list: I also have a Patreon if you like my work and want to help fund art materials, vibe coding, web hosting, and whatever weird thing I get obsessed with creating next.

For now, I’m going to go back to trying to publish my watch face.

* Before I had enough confidence in my own artwork, I just took pictures of poseable toys doing weird stuff in the world.