About

The locked plexiglass cabinet

Once upon a time I was a kid who liked to draw but wasn’t that great at it. I made an art project for school that expressed how my life up to that point had made me feel. It was a photo self-portrait of me “in a straitjacket,” the long sleeves of my striped shirt crossed and tucked into the back of my waistband, painted over with harsh colors and written statements of misery and anger. In my memory I hated it as soon as I was done, but it was too late.

It hung for years behind locked plexiglass in the hallway like a shrine to my suffering. I passed it every day, multiple times a day, making regretful eye contact and feeling my face get hot every single time; I grew to hate that sheet of paper so much that I internalized a belief that I was only capable of making art by other means.

I don’t know how to segue into the fact that now it’s a few decades later and I’m still struggling to put a portfolio together, unsatisfied by everything I’ve made, blah blah blah. Enter my wife, who suggests I try painting. Suddenly, okay, this makes sense. I don’t know what I was so scared of before. I have all these globs of things, various goops, slimes, crusties and juices. And all I have to do is mix them up and follow some rules, and I can translate what I see and feel into an art!

I’ll never know if any of it is really any good, but I absolutely love doing it, and I’m finally feeling like, y’know what, yeah, sure, put it up in the hallway.

So welcome to the locked plexiglass cabinet in the hallway of my mind. Thanks for taking a look!

Wil

Commissions & inquiries

I’m open to commissions and custom work. Use the contact form or email me@wilhamlin.com. Prints are on Etsy.