37



(It just kept looking as though the lamb was overcome, flooded.
This certainly did not bring the hope I'd intended for the painting/my friend.
Still, there was a flickering presence in the deluge...)

Friday night I was scraping thick paint across this canvas with a palate knife (after I thought I'd screwed up) wondering what comes next, when I had to remind myself  that whatever I was facing was all there for a reason. Even if I didn't "get it" yet, I knew it would eventually come together. I wondered this aloud and my dear friend who was (calmly) painting nearby looked at me sideways, chuckled and asked if my painting was talking to me. As if she were the nutty one, I snapped, "No silly, I'm talking to my painting!"

After sitting with it a bit longer, I began to see that the scraping/"mistake" made way for me to imagine a gradient rainbow of other colors on the canvas. I slept that night knowing I would be adding the rest of the spectrum to the canvas eventually.

Then late last night (Saturday) I watched Gerhard Richter Painting. (Um, hello! I'm 37 and I love abstract art yet I've never heard of the FAMOUS artist who busted Jasper Johns' record? Needless to say, I was/am enamored. More on him later.) After watching the movie, the few hours I slept (I'm sick), I dreamed about giant, colorful paintings. I dreamed a hole had to be cut into the side of my studio because the door was too small to deliver the paintings I had assembled inside (Yes, I know...quite a dream!).

When I woke up this morning (Sunday) I went straight to my studio to do this:

Of course it was supposed to look like this. Of course there's a promise on this canvas!

"Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace."

"I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth."

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One of the really great things about being an intuitive/expressive artist is making discoveries organically, experientially. Without fear or limitation one boldly authors a narrative amidst total immersion! (It is easier to learn than unlearn.)

Over my lifetime I have been unearthing such discoveries slowly enough to notice how one thing has led to another. For me, there was painting with water on newsprint before there was painting with color! Then there was pencil, then pen and markers, calligraphy and writing with a metal nib full of color! There was Impressionism---and then there was surrealism! And then there was discovering the richness of oil color, collage and inks (Kimmie!), paraffin resist, gold leaf, etc. There was life before encountering Joseph Cornell (actually on my 30th birthday!), and then life after. Then there was metal and fire! And now there are biographies and art and artists (some are clients!) and process is absolutely everywhere!

Before each discovery I was not conscious of what I was missing. I was content and entertained with whatever I was doing at the time. Yet I remember each of these discoveries distinctly, and to go back on them now would be impossible. I look back and see evidence of these discoveries in my artwork over time...and what a cool "diary" that is!

I am thirty-seven today.