Every painting has an origin story. My initial vision for this blog was to show the evolution of pieces, from start to finish. (If I could, I would name my blog, “The Journey Is Everything.”) You can track the progress of all my pieces on my Instagram feed.
Here is the origin story of Shine On – my rusty sunflower piece, which has taken on many forms over the past year…
8/12/17 – Wrote out my morning meditation on engaged, contemplative imagination. #BeginAgain
8/14/17 – Morning Meditation (final). For my COCA Residency, I took this 24″x24″ white painting, and brought it to life in a 90″x 90″ 3D installation ~ The Truth Has No Borders. This shipping container installation combined 40 years of work in writing, music, film and art into a single exhibit examining identity, family, culture and migration.
2/10/18 – I lied earlier when I posted the white painting, Morning Meditation, and said it was my “Final” layer. The following week, I was bored to death of it. So I taped it back up, and went back to work.
2/12/18 – Shoreline. Came downstairs to find the kid laying out wax scraps on my painting, telling me it needed more texture. So I spent the day fusing the wax scraps onto the painting, and adding silver leaf.
7/19/18 – And now, for something completely different. I scraped and torched the Shoreline piece all the way down to the panel. 🔥🤩 The free write on the base of this panel was suffocating under the layers of valiant, earnest effort. Now it (and I) can finally breathe again.#BlowtorchTherapy #NoPanelLeftBehind #BeginAgain
7/31/18 – Today I return to a mostly empty studio, and start the day by making sunflower seeds ~a perfect meditation for beginning again.
8/1/18 – Got my first coat of rust on the sunflower seeds.
8/2/18 – Conquering fears today about not being able to draw by just painting these petals on free hand. More coats to follow. 😅 (I needed some way to pass time while the second coat of rust dried on the sunflower seeds!)
10/16/18 – Shine On! Applying new knowledge about color mixing to this piece, which is vying for a spot in pop-up exhibit/talk next week (“My Life in 24 Frames“, 10/23 at 6pm, Columbia City Gallery).