Through Gabrielle Abott's Yoni Garden
Gabrielle Abbott is a street performer, muralist, painter and free spirit based in Seattle, USA. She is also the creator of the YoniFlower project, an art project based on vulva-like flowers designed to help women (re)connect with their body and bring a renewed sense of confidence, eroticism and pleasure into their life.
I had the chance to sit with her for an hour last summer and explore the meaning of art, love, growth, spirituality and so much more. But let's start at the beginning..
When Did Your Artistic Journey Begin?
I really think that it began when I was born. I've always known I wanted to be an artist. I remember even being three years-old and telling my preschool teachers that drawing was my favorite thing to do, but I decided to pursue it seriously after I graduated from high school and eventually, around age 26, I was able to go full time with it and I've been full time now for over four years.
How Did your Style Evolve Over the Years?
When I first took the journey into studying art seriously I thought I wanted to be a traditional oil painting portrait painter. I went to an academy in Italy where they teach very conservative traditional styles of painting. I dove into that for about three years and loved everything I was learning but left that program and realized .. I was bored.
It wasn't actually my sole expression of art.
Now I primarily work as a muralist and street artist, and I also have the Yoniflower project which is my personal work that I do in my studio.
Where Did The Yoniflowers Come From?
That project actually started as a personal art therapy project.
For a really long time, ever since being a teenager, I had body dysmorphia about the way that my vulva looked. I thought that I was strange looking.. I thought my labia were too long and I was really insecure.
The only comparison I had for what a yoni -or vulva- was supposed to look like was through porn, and not only was I asymmetric but I didn’t realize that it was normal to have labia. I thought that I was experiencing a body mutation and was just horribly insecure.
I thought maybe no one would ever love me. I thought that perhaps I should have surgery to get this deformity removed.
I mean, I was so confused.. but in my 20s I decided to not carry that story anymore and I got very intentional about trying to change my relationship to my body, and part happened by looking at a lot of images of the variety of women's vulvas and trying to really get comfortable with how women's bodies actually look.
And through that process, I started to paint yonis as flowers to celebrate them.. and I just painted them, alone in my room, again and again, drew them in all sorts of different ways for my own healing, and it really worked!
It completely transformed how I felt about my body! I love my yoni today, I love her so much. I can't believe I ever didn't like her -that's so sad- but that's not the case anymore.
And I realized through that work that so many women needed this and so the project then became public. I started creating prints for people to buy and leading workshops for women to learn how to paint their own, and it just continues to blossom in a lot of ways.
What Is Your Favorite Self-made Piece And Why?
I have a piece called Kundalini Yoniflower that i painted a couple years ago. This is my favorite piece, at the moment, because of all my pieces this is the one that felt like the most like a channeling.
I didn't draw out any sketches beforehand, I didn't practice.. I just had this image in my head. I sat down and just.. did it. And it flowed out so effortlessly, I don't really know where it came from.
It feels like it just came to me. And I know what the symbols mean to me, but when I talk to people, everyone has a different interpretation of how all these elements fit together, which i also like.
What Would You Like The Audience To Experience Through Your Work?
I want people to look at my work and feel a deep reverence for the feminine, the feminine essence and the feminine body.
I also want them to recognize how pure and beautiful and natural and great our sexuality is. Our desire for sex, our sex organs, our sexual expression.. that it is as perfect and needed and necessary as the flowers in our garden and the trees in the forest.
That it is equal to all those beautiful forces of nature which we admire and appreciate.
What Do You Like Most About Your Work?
I love the way I feel when I am creating the work. I feel like I am doing what my life purpose is, what I came here to do. I feel happy, in flow and connected to all the parts of myself.
It’s like channeling. Time just stops, I am completely absorbed in my painting and I could just go for hours without eating or sleeping.
What Was The Worst Moment Of Your Career, And What Did You Learn Through It?
When I was about 25, I went to grad school in London to do an MFA and I thought that this experience was going to be the pivotal part of my career, where I was sort of discovered by the art world and it was going to launch me.. But what ended up happening was that I really struggled in the academic environment and I nearly failed the course.
It was devastating for me. I felt like a failure, I felt completely rejected by the art world. I was confused about what had happened and why ; what my part of it was.. And I almost did not make any art for almost two years after that, even questioning whether I was on the right path or not. But it ended up being really the best thing for me.
Overcoming the failure of my MFA program, that’s my proudest moment. It's my biggest failure.
A Common Misconception To Debunk?
One of the things I was actually told in art school was that my work was too feminine.
I don't believe there's any such thing as making art that is too feminine. My art is my expression of my truth, my reality and my experience here on earth and I think that’s really valuable.
I don't need everyone to like it either, but I think that we need to make greater space for art that is feminine, and we need to elevate it at the same level as an art that, maybe , might feels more masculine.
Something That Never Fails To Motivate You
When I think about why i'm really here, on the planet, and how short life is.. I get my butt into the art studio.
It's really easy for me to get caught up in the admin of running my business, my chores, my relationships and other things like that, but if too much time passes and I’m not connecting to my art, I start to feel an anxiety and stress.
I have to remember that this is the most important thing. Life is brief and you don't have that much time to do it, so even if it's just an hour, just make the time and do it while you're alive and while you're here.
What Advice Would You give Young Artists?
Just be yourself, do your best and don't worry what other people think. I wish I had taken that advice.
I wish I had trusted myself to be myself a little bit more, and tried less to fit in to what other people thought I should be, either professionally or artistically. I wish I'd given myself permission to be a little bit weirder, and a little bit more authentic.
What Do You Wish I Would Have Asked You Today?
I wish you had asked me how my sex life has integrated with my artistic life, because it's something I love to talk about and I feel like my sexual journey has really coincided with my artistic journey. Because the more I painted vulvas - the more I connected to my own through art and was exploring these forms-, the more my sexual experiences opened up into this whole new world of pleasure and consciousness and connection with my partner that was just deeply fulfilling.
There's this capacity to just create this incredible love and nourishing life-giving energy when you share your body in love and in bliss and in pleasure with someone special, and I think that it's our birthright to feel that ; to feel just totally accepted and blissful.
It's a path to god, it's a path to the divine and to the divine within each of us. And to really give yourself permission to stay in that space, rather than chasing an end goal, it just opens up so many delicious things.
Nowadays, Gabrielle focuses most of her energy on her private projects, as well as the online course she has created in order to help other creative people step into the professional world of art - The Quantum Artist.
This development program was designed to help people clarify their vision and market ; teach them how to create their brand, initiate collaborations and contact galleries ; show them how to price their art, stay aligned with their purpose and even market themselves on social media.
It contains all of the tools needed to successfully transition from the hobby to professional stage, with the support of a loving and supporting community ✨
If you are interested in learning more about this course or any of her project, you can reach Gabrielle on her website or on social media @gabrielleabott and @yoniflowers .
And you, what would you have asked Gabrielle?
