Conspirators

I sat with my painting for DEEP for a bit towards the end of last week. I was feeling drained, stretched thin and wanted to just curl up in my bed and hide from the waking world. My work week was incredibly taxing, people were exceptionally mean and to top it off a friend seems to be drifting off in to the ether without neither a reason I know of nor an explanation from him. My heart was so very heavy.

Instead of laying in bed though, I plopped myself on the carpet below my painting and just looked up at it for a bit. I figure, if we're going to form a relationship we'd better get used to seeing each other at our most bedraggled as well as our most excited. After a bit, I got up, grabbed the white paint and a brush and just started to add whatever tugged at me to it. A figure blowing dandelion wishes. Circles. (these show up in a lot of my paintings.) and rays of light bursting through the door. Once the juice ran out, I put my brush down and stepped back, glad to have gotten to sneak in some time with my painting despite the other stressors. Even if just a smidge.

Tonight I stepped back up to the painting and it begged me to make it bigger. There was this overwhelming feeling that something big... no HUGE... wanted to come through that door and in to view. There was a big old knock and I wasn't going to say no. So down it came and more paper was added.

Then I grabbed my brush and played with shape - a big puffy cloud-like outline. That felt right. Then a few swoops and swipes and a slumbering woman, hand on knee appeared. And I stayed with her for quite a while; lazily adding color to her, slowly outlining her in raw sienna. It felt so decadent, like the two of us were conspiring; she on the wall and me leaning close as I painted. And when I got to her knees... well, another face appeared. And then a third.

And while I stayed in the space with this trio, I felt so connected to the paper. Like I could whisper all of my heart's secrets, fears and deepest desires to them and they in turn would whisper theirs back.

Once I backed away, the concern for how radically different the two weeks worth of paintings looked reared up pointing out that they may as well be two separate pieces. I'm getting better at telling the nagging of the fear gremlin from the urges of my intuition though. So despite the urge to cut the two apart and stick with this new imagery, I'm going to stay close to these three while the energy is there. And leave the hows and whys of connectivity for another day.

P.S. My musical tastes are all over the place, as some of you may know. For this painting, I'm just listening to whatever makes me feel good. Since I'm diving deep in to myself and my painting practice with this one, I'm trying not to let the music swing the mood on it too much. That being said, I cannot get enough of this song right now. So I wanted to share.