We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Payton Hurley . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Payton below.

Alright, Payton thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful project I have ever worked on is my collection of Blooming Bodies. I create art using the human form and botanical elements woven into bodies. Each of the bodies in my work have a meaning behind them. The meaning that I create lies in the pose, movement, type of flower, or colors specific to the piece. I also create a lot based on current struggles I am going through personally or that I see others enduring and overcoming. These experiences whether directly experienced or witnessed often become the intricate tangle of meaning that my work embodies.

As part of my custom catalog, I create commissions based on a being’s story or journey of overcoming. I work with people to create a piece that embodies their story and holds the essence of their strength. My passion for helping people love who they are originated through my own journey of self understanding and growth. In outgrowing parts of myself that I created to please other people, I was able to fill that space with my own passion and creativity. I sat with my darkness from years of hating the person I had become, and upon vowing to take control of my mental health, I started creating the Blooming Bodies. I have never looked back.
I use my creativity to create action inspiring conversations around what beauty truly is, and the journey of overcoming, and creating who you are meant to be despite the limited lenses that society offers.

There is so much hatred around our physical beings. So much judgment around how we appear to others from both ourselves and those around us. This is unfortunately inevitable based on the way society is built to suppress the confidence of those who live a lifestyle that differs from the status quo. Every human’s relationship with their body and soul is different. When it comes to the practice of self love and acceptance, we all start in a different place, and move at a different pace. The important part is that you decide to start. You will gradually discover the approach that works for you through a collection of mistakes and triumphs. This collection becomes your authentic journey.

My art is meant to be a reminder that a body is simply that, a body. Bodies are weird, bodies are different, bodies have an expiration date. But how we use our body to express and experience this beautiful life is what truly matters. We are hard on ourselves. Sometimes it feels near impossible to switch that harsh mindset suddenly or even gradually. It does not happen overnight and for some people it doesn’t happen at all. Self love is not an easy decision, but you are worth it. It is not selfish to take care of yourself. To put yourself first. You have to take care of yourself before you can share any of that energy.

Our physical bodies are merely the vessels that carry our true power and purpose. Our minds, our passions, our sexual desires, our senses, our fears, pain and trauma, joy, mistakes and countless lessons, the blissful moments we look back on in tough times…our body merely makes these things tangible as we grow. Our bodies allow us to express these powerful emotions and create ourselves. They allow us to experience growth and change.

If we do not love or even like our bodies, that is okay, maybe it is something to work towards, or maybe we don’t have to think as much about our bodies at all. Maybe we just try to lessen negative self-talk. Be kinder to ourselves. Stop comparing, stop shaming others for living life as they are meant to. Life is ever changing. Whatever your journey may hold, try to focus on things that you want to do more of to feel peace. Change the dialogue. Focus on the parts of you that bloom from the inside. The parts that embody the core of who you are. It is never too late to discover and embrace a new part of yourself you may not have seen before.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up in a small beach town in Florida, and now I work in New Orleans as a mixed media artist. The main theme of my work is focused around women, LGBTQIA+ empowerment, and body positivity/neutrality. My message acts to softly awaken others to the daily choice of self-love. It encourages embracing who you are fully at each stage of life, allowing growth towards the version of yourself that exists in your most powerful and peaceful state of mind.

I first began creating art during my recovery from multiple knee injuries at the age of fifteen. With my newfound free time during recovery, my restless mind redirected focus to my creative side. I went on to study art in college, with figure drawing, watercolor, and mixed media capturing my imagination. One of the art forms that had the biggest impact on my artistic journey was handmade paper making. During my early 20’s I worked with an organization called The Peace Paper Project where the process of paper making was used as transformative healing for people who had experienced trauma. I absolutely fell in love with this organic art form and plan to incorporate it into my upcoming pieces. Other than my studies in college I have learned through self exploration and work out of my home studio.

I paused my visual creations for a long while after college trying to figure everything out and battling my depression that seemed to creep back in at every sign of a breakthrough. One day while living in LA with my partner, I spent the last of my money that definitely should have gone towards rent on a bunch of art supplies deciding to dive back in. I created the first women figures and called them the “We are Women” series. Simple. black white and grayscale. But it awoke something inside of me to create using the human figure. Gave me a bit of hope. Soon after that we moved across the country to New Orleans and I practiced the human form for a few years after that while working a job as a teacher. Then covid hit. I suddenly had more time than I ever had to create a guilt free environment. In a time where the world seemed to pause and say ” explore what you haven’t been able to, find what gives you meaning before it’s too late” I can’t say any of this without acknowledging how lucky I was to be healthy and in a safe environment, and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to dedicate that time to hone my skill and push my artistic curiosities.

During this newfound time to reflect, I began the Blooming Bodies, mostly out of confusion and trying to make sense of the millions of feelings I always had but never slowed down enough to process. The feelings of wandering through a world that seemed terrifying to step foot into. A world where I already didn’t feel like I belonged far before quarantine began. But as hard as life got under any circumstances, I still couldn’t help but feel that there were little pieces of magic and messages trying to tell me to get back to what was important, what truly mattered. There was always something there in nature to remind me how beautiful life was and how each human sees the world so differently and it made me want to celebrate that. The strength that we find within when we are brave enough to face the deeper parts of ourselves. The resilience we have as humans, regardless of how we look, or how we live, or who we love…and I realized the cause I was most passionate about. I wanted to lift up others who were brave enough to be exactly who they are. Or empower those who were not quite ready yet and needed support on their journey of self love and acceptance. So I created art that I hoped would move people. Inspire them to embrace who they were each moment of each day and use their beautiful soul to express in a way only they could. To color this world in a way only they could and to do it unapologetically. And I just kept expressing myself an a way that felt meaningful to me in hopes that it would inspire others to do the same. This led to my Blooming Bodies collection.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

This is honestly a really beautiful breakthrough I had when creating the blooming body series. Each new piece I make usually teaches me something about myself or a past version of myself created out of trauma. Channeling my overwhelm into the creations, they allowed me to sit with a certain emotion and express it in a way that taught me something about myself. Something that I either didn’t have before or buried so deep that I couldn’t see it anymore. I have unlearned many lessons of negative self talk, body shaming, comparing myself, demeaning my own self worth, telling myself I am not enough or do not belong. Lessons I learned out of fear and hatred and shame…that I am not sure I otherwise would have been able to forgive myself for or grow from. In unlearning these behaviors within myself I became passionate about helping others unlearn these toxic behaviors that they likely had to adapt to survive in past toxic and unwelcoming environments.

And in unlearning these lessons learned and adopted out of survival mode… it has inspired me more to continue this series and to help others out of their downward spiral of emotional overwhelm in a society where women and the LGBTQIA community do not feel accepted or embraced for who they are. At one point I thought I was a lost cause, and even in losing hope these creations brought a new light and sense of self to my life. A sense of self that came from the darker places inside of me that helped me heal and unlearn toxic and harmful self talk and habits that keep me in a loop of anxiety, depression, and lack of self worth. I want others to find their breakthrough, and have encouraging reminders on their journeys that they are not alone and that they belong, and deserve to be embraced as exactly who they are.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I have had a few experiences where people who encounter my work and read the meanings and descriptions on the back of the pieces begin crying at markets. I have people reach out to me and tell me that they found my work in a shop and the person that they were with was in tears halfway through reading the meaning because it resonated with them so much. Many people will tell me that they were drawn to a certain piece and then upon reading the back it ends up being a message they needed at that time in their life.

These experiences where people truly have a moment where they feel seen, embraced, and worthy of love are rewarding beyond words. These are the moments that I hope to bring to people where they are moved somewhere deep down in a meaningful way. Where for a moment they feel that overwhelming sense of self love and worth and know that they are worth fighting for and that they are welcome in this world to be exactly who they are, unapologetically.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.paytonhurleyart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paytonhurleyart/?hl=en