Six Rejections and the Stories Behind the Mixed Media Layers
What if rejection is not telling us to stop? What if it is asking us to listen more closely, dig more deeply, and create the work we have not yet been brave enough to make?
Last week, I received six rejections in a matter of days. Usually, I can accept a closed door, brush myself off, and keep moving. Rejection is part of being a working artist. We submit our artwork to exhibitions, galleries, publications, residencies, and other opportunities knowing that not every response will be yes.
But this particular wave hit differently. Instead of rolling off my back, each rejection seemed to add another layer of self-doubt. For a few difficult days, I began questioning my work, my direction, and whether I was making any real progress at all.
Fortunately, my husband, Todd, and several dear friends refused to let me disappear beneath that wave. They listened, encouraged me, and helped me adjust my perspective. Then someone shared a piece of wisdom that completely shifted my thinking. Years ago, when he was starting his own business and felt as though every door was locked, his mentor told him, “Every rejection just means you are leveling up.”
I do not believe every disappointment automatically becomes a gift. Some experiences simply hurt, and there is no need to pretend otherwise. But I do believe we can decide what we create from those experiences.
So, I am choosing to level up.
Choosing What Leveling Up Means to Me
For me, leveling up does not mean spending more hours behind a desk or desperately searching for six new opportunities to replace the ones I lost. It means returning to the place where my strongest work begins: the studio.
It means spending more time painting, pushing my contemporary mixed media art further, and trusting the visual language I have developed. It means leaning into richer storytelling and creating work that speaks directly to something within the viewer.
I want my paintings to do more than fill a wall. I want someone to stop, move closer, and become curious. I want them to discover unexpected marks, buried shapes, fragments of collage, and passages of color that reveal themselves slowly. Most of all, I want the work to create a moment of connection that cannot always be explained in words.
That kind of artwork cannot be rushed.
My mixed media painting process is intuitive and responsive. I begin with movement, color, marks, and materials, then listen to what begins emerging. One decision influences the next. Some marks remain visible, while others are altered, partially obscured, or covered completely beneath new layers of paint, collage, drawing, and texture.
Even the parts we can no longer see remain part of the painting’s history.
Two of the largest and most significant paintings in my current collection, Beyond Understanding and Translation in Progress, taught me this lesson in a particularly powerful way.
How These Two Mixed Media Paintings Began
Beyond Understanding and Translation in Progress are both 48-by-48-inch acrylic, collage, and mixed media paintings on canvas. They belong to my current collection, Through Me: Where Wonder Finds a Way, which explores what can happen when I release control, listen more deeply, and allow myself to become a vessel for what wants to emerge.
These two paintings did not arrive quickly or easily. When I began them, I was dealing with severe shoulder bursitis and trying desperately to prevent it from developing into frozen shoulder. Painting on a large canvas requires my entire body. I reach, bend, stretch, move around the surface, and respond physically to the marks. My shoulder pain forced me to work more slowly and cautiously than I wanted.
I painted the first botanical forms across the canvases, establishing the beginning of a visual environment. Before I could develop them further, however, I had to pause my studio work to travel to California with Todd for one of his work trips.
Stepping away from an unfinished painting can be uncomfortable. I sometimes worry that I will lose the energy, forget where I was going, or return without knowing how to continue. This time, however, the distance gave the paintings room to follow me.
When California Echoed the Canvases
While exploring Los Angeles, I encountered wild, vibrant flora that stopped me in my tracks. The shapes, movement, and energy of the plants looked remarkably similar to the flora I had intuitively painted on my canvases before leaving Virginia.
It felt as though the paintings and the landscape were speaking the same visual language—one I had begun translating before I consciously understood its source. The experience was bizarre, magical, and deeply affirming. It reminded me that inspiration does not always begin with a conscious plan. Sometimes we create something intuitively and understand its meaning only after the marks are already present.
I returned home energized and ready to work. I thought this experience would provide the missing answer and allow the paintings to resolve quickly.
Naturally, the paintings had other ideas.
The compositions still felt flat. They contained color and movement, but they did not yet possess the depth, energy, or sense of discovery I wanted them to hold. I could feel something stirring beneath the surface, but I could not yet see how to bring it forward.
Building the Story Through Collage and Texture
I began building more mixed media layers, attaching leopard-spotted tissue paper to the canvases and allowing pieces of the pattern to appear and disappear within the compositions. I added pastel, additional paint, and overlapping botanical forms that peeked from behind the background.
Each material changed the visual conversation. The tissue paper introduced pattern and an unexpected wildness. The pastel brought softness and immediacy. The overlapping forms created the feeling that something larger was growing beyond the visible edges of the canvas.
This is one of the things I love most about layered abstract painting. The surface contains a record of curiosity. When viewers move closer, they can discover fragments, lines, textures, and small surprises that may not be visible from across the room. The painting changes as they move toward it, almost as if it is gradually sharing its secrets.
The additional materials gave these paintings greater richness and visual depth, but something was still missing. I kept working because I wanted to solve them. Yet the more determined I became to force an answer, the less clearly I could hear what they needed.
Eventually, I did the hardest thing.
I stopped.
I left the studio, went to bed, and allowed the paintings to rest.
When the Paintings Finally Spoke
The following morning, I walked downstairs and stood quietly in front of the two canvases. Instead of immediately reaching for a brush, I waited and listened.
As I looked, I suddenly visualized lines of asemic writing flowing across the compositions. Asemic writing resembles written language, but it does not carry one fixed or literal meaning. The marks suggest communication while leaving space for viewers to interpret them through their own memories and experiences.
The paintings were showing me exactly what they needed.
I picked up my brush and began adding gestural, writing-like marks across the background layers. The lines moved through the botanical shapes, collage, color, and texture, creating a rhythm that connected elements that had previously felt separate.
The energy of both paintings shifted almost immediately. The writing became the thread that pulled everything together. It suggested a message being received and translated—something meaningful moving through the paintings that could be sensed even if it could not be completely explained.
That realization helped me understand their names.
Beyond Understanding speaks to the experience of recognizing that something matters even when we cannot define it logically. Translation in Progress reflects the act of receiving, interpreting, and making meaning while the message is still unfolding.
Together, the paintings hold a mysterious conversation between intuition, memory, nature, and the creative process.
What the Mixed Media Layers Taught Me
These paintings reminded me that some things unfold more slowly than we believe they should. Sometimes an artwork needs another layer or a completely different material. Sometimes it needs distance, silence, or a night alone in the studio.
Sometimes we have to stop forcing an answer long enough to recognize that it is already beginning to appear.
That lesson feels especially important after a week filled with rejection. My first instinct could have been to panic, scatter my energy, or immediately chase six replacement opportunities. Instead, I am choosing to return to my work with greater intention. I am listening for the stories waiting inside the materials and allowing my paintings to become more layered, more courageous, and more fully my own.
Rejection may close a particular door, but it does not get to determine the value of my work or the size of the path I create next.
Making Space for What Comes Next
This renewed studio energy has already begun carrying me in new directions. I recently painted two glowing oceanscapes for our home office, inspired by the water Todd and I both love and our dream of someday living near the ocean.
Those paintings brought serenity, light, and possibility into a space where we spend so much time working and planning. They also reminded me how profoundly original artwork can change the feeling of a room.
A painting becomes part of our everyday lives. It greets us in the morning, changes with the light, holds memories, and reminds us of what matters. It can help create the emotional atmosphere of a home while reflecting something meaningful about the people who live there.
That is the experience I want my artwork to create for collectors.
As I spend the next few weeks working quietly in the studio, I am not stepping backward or disappearing. I am building the next layer. I am leveling up—not by becoming louder, busier, or less like myself, but by becoming more deeply committed to the stories only I can tell.
If you are facing your own collection of closed doors, perhaps this is your invitation to pause before deciding what they mean. Give yourself permission to feel the disappointment, but also give yourself time to listen.
The next layer may already be waiting beneath the surface.
Discover the Stories Within the Layers
I invite you to explore Beyond Understanding, Translation in Progress, and the complete Through Me: Where Wonder Finds a Way collection. Look closely at the collage, botanical forms, expressive marks, and asemic writing. Notice which details pull you closer—and which painting feels as though it is holding a story that connects with your own.
If one of these original mixed media paintings feels as though it belongs in your home, I would be delighted to help you learn more about the work and envision it within your space.
Visit preciousburger.com and choose Recent Paintings to explore the collection.
With an open heart, renewed energy, and dirty paintbrushes,
Precious Burger
Contemporary Mixed Media Artist
“Rejection is not the end of the road; it is simply a detour encouraging you to level up and build a bigger path.”
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