Charleston artist Lauren Ridenour documented her thoughts and emotions every day in 2022 through a series of 365 drawings. Ridenour has garnered a large following on social media for her daily posts of original artwork, which often capture vulnerable feelings, especially anxiety and insecurity.
“My goal when creating this series was to be extremely honest and vulnerable in hopes to show how similar we are to one another,” Ridenour told the City Paper.
Each day in 2022, Ridenour created expressive and simplistic line drawings, which incorporated text to reveal her thoughts, struggles and inspirations. The project encapsulated the emotional rollercoaster of one year in the artist’s life.
She posted the images on Instagram daily. Her comment section is filled with responses like, “this resonates,” or “hits home.” (Some people even go so far as to get tattoos of her work.) Ridenour said that she enjoys how the drawings can “mean different things to different people.”
“Reading peoples’ stories is something I cherish,” she said. “I’ll get messages saying, ‘I didn’t know anyone else felt this way,’ and it sort of builds this bridge for us to connect. That was my goal all along. I wanted to show that we are all the same — that we all struggle with the same things.”
On day 292 of the project, Ridenour made and posted a drawing which reads, “I’m sorry I hurt you when I was hurting.” Someone commented on that post, “How do I send this to my mom without sending it to my mom?” On day 190, Ridenour wrote, “I think you would feel differently if you fully understood.” A commenter said, “I just want to fully understand myself.”
On day 79, Ridenour wrote, “I’m so scared of the future.” The post received more than 11,000 likes.
Ridenour, who is originally from Fort Mill, moved to Charleston eight years ago and now works out of a studio at Redux Contemporary Art Center. She said she has always been an artist, and that finally making the jump into full-time art in early 2022 was a major inspiration for the series.
“I quit my job last year, so a lot of the ones that are about change were having to do with that,” she said. “A lot happened this year — good and bad. Part of the project I really enjoyed was a sense of control. I just needed to worry about today’s drawing.”
The drawings and incorporated text are a physical manifestation of Ridenour’s anxieties, insecurities and ponderings, so it comes as no surprise when she explained that some of the series is inspired by “what keeps [her] up at night.”
“I think we all do that thing where we lay in bed at night and think, ‘I wish I didn’t say that thing, or I wish I said it differently,’” she said. “Looking back at the whole project, it makes me feel less alone in those feelings.”
She keeps the figures in her work as “neutral as possible,” she said, so that anyone may find themselves in her work.
“There was no expectation when I started. People responding to it, and resonating with it, that’s more than I could’ve ever imagined,” she said.
For 2023, Ridenour said she wants to explore a new way of creating.
“I do a lot of markets, and it’s always funny to me how some people are like, ‘This one is so funny,’ or ‘This one is so sad’ about the same piece,” Ridenour said. For her next project, she said she wants to do “more listening.”
“Moving forward, I really want to do a project that’s not so much what I’m thinking, but what other people are thinking. Reading people’s messages has been really inspiring, and so I want to think about those messages and let that inspire me, instead of my own thoughts for a change.”
Learn more about the artist at laurenridenour.com or follow her on Instagram @laurenridenour_art.
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