Healing and Renewal

The idea for this painting began to take form 18 months ago when I told a friend I'd like to create a painting for his expected baby girl's room, and asked if there was a particular visual element he and his wife wanted to use.  'Butterflies' was his response.

I love butterflies and all they connote and symbolize...so I began to draw, and looked for painting photo resources that I could use to build my drawing and use again later as a color reference when I began to paint.

Looking for butterflies became quite an obsession, and I found some real beauties!  Just how to integrate them into the picture plane was another quandary for me to resolve.  About that time, a friend gave me a picture of her garden, and I had my answer.  Resplendent in lavender and blue delphiniums and radiant red poppies, it was a perfect setting for my painting.  I made a simple drawing, and small individual butterfly cutouts that could be moved around as I went through the process of final placement.

The child for which the painting was destined was born with health issues, and by the age of 6 months had undergone 2 surgeries, and was, thankfully, beginning to thrive.  A beautiful baby, this warrior princess warranted a more significant tribute in my mind.  I chose a monarch butterfly to be the royal subject, smaller than some of the other, more vibrantly colored specimens,  but more suited to represent her spirit.

The painting took months to come to fruition, as it took form on the Arches 140 CP watercolor rag paper:  simple shapes, painted flatly, evolved into larger-than-life stalks of flowers, so real that one is tempted to bend over and smell their captivating fragrance.

So much of the illusion of real blooming flowers was created by brush-drawn calligraphic marks with various colors to define the shapes of the bloom clusters on the stem stalks.  These strokes gave them a sense of reality and eliminated the sweetly-colored flat shapes that were so displeasing to me personally at that stage.

The final result is a painting in which the garden comes alive with growing things, further enhanced by the magnificence of butterflies flying freely among the blooming spires.  A painting to love and to grow with, Sloane's Garden is so much like the little girl for whom it was made -- alive, hopeful and filled with the promise of a life renewed.

Sloane's Garden

Beginning again

There are points in time when the planets line up and the universe dictates that no matter how much you know, you don't know anything...and the situation requires that you 'begin again'.  There's a quote from Albert Camus that I have long cherished and continue to carry with me into day-to-day life:  'What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.'  In the last week or so, there has been a card making the rounds on facebook that paraphrases the Camus quote, and adds '...and at this point I should be able to bench press a Buick.'  Julia Cameron, in her book The artist's way, maintains that to be successful one must be willing to begin again.  In my worklife, I have had just such an opportunity in the last month that has proven to be frustrating, challenging, sometimes overwhelming, but nonetheless a chance to grow and to learn...and to begin again.

In an effort to give a visual impression of this concept, I took an old, unsuccessful painting of the lighthouse at Los Pinos and...began again.  I was very intrigued by the patterns that its dome and windows created as I brayered thin layers of paint to break up the original image.  It reminded me of photographs I had seen of carvings made into the sides of mountains in the Far East.  With this memory, and the lyrics of the song 'Pilgrim steps' in my mind, I decided to build on this image, and to flesh it out on the surface of this painting.  Continuing on the Asian line of thought, I became curious to know what the kanji for 'Pilgrim steps' might be.  I was very intrigued by the calligraphic form of the characters, and decided to integrate them into the painting.  The colors I chose are deep and dramatic, much like the emotions that accompany 'beginning again'...but if you look closely, to the left of what appears to be carvings in stone, there is a bridge, a visual sign of 'the path'. 

Pilgrim Steps

In closing, let me share one more quote, from Sir Ken Robinson.  He says, 'Being creative has all kinds of manifestations.  It's not just in the arts.  It's not just in music, or dance, or theatre, or writing, or painting, though it is in all of those things.  You can be creative at anything.  You can be creative in business.  You can be creative in technology and science - in anything that involves your intelligence.  But being creative, which is about having original ideas, requires actual skills in the field in which you are working - and an openness of mind, a willingness to explore, a confidence in your imagination, a willingness to try things out and make mistakes and try again.'

To get past fear and anxiety, and to be a true pilgrim, carving a way through uncharted territory, we must learn to breathe and have confidence that the skills we hold within, along with our creative energies, will be enough to see us through.

To hear the song 'Pilgrim steps', written and performed by my friend, Larry Looney, click on the 'play' arrow below...