It is Finished!
Now What?
The biggest watercolor painting I have ever done – or thought I ever would do – is finished! I am thrilled with it! I'm still unpacking what it means. I know where the inspiration came from; it was the synergy of many sources.
First there was that big roll of water color paper I bought at a time of great change in my life. The roll is as tall as I am, 5 feet even, by...I've forgotten how many yards wide. We had just given my husband Bob's ashes to the Salish Sea he so loved. I had some money from his life insurance, but my financial future was uncertain. Would I be able to afford good water color paper when that money ran out?
I kept the roll safely wrapped in plastic in a corner of my preschool classroom before it became my studio. Someday, I thought, I will paint something really big on it, maybe an abstract. Eventually the paper fell out of my awareness as I figured out my life.
Years later, I visited my brother Steve in China. He took me to a street in Houzhou famous for making good brushes, often from goat hair. I bought their biggest brush, it's soft hairs almost as long as my hand, and another brush still many times bigger than any waiting for me at home. I hung the big brush on the wall, and it slipped out of my mind.
I painted on silk. I wrote two children's books, illustrated them, and published them myself. "Peacock Princess" and "Once When We Were Merfolk" are available from me here or on Amazon; you can order "Once When We Were Merfolk " through your bookstore, who can get it from Ingram (support your local bookstore!).
I tried out acrylics, art journaling , and mixed media painting.
“Quiet Love”, mixed media collage
I took a class in Russian Impressionist oil painting.
“Vase”, oil, from class with Pam Engels
I painted 50 little (5"x7") paintings in 50 days, trying out various techniques from watercolor to collage, from landscapes to abstracts.
“Crabbing Season”, watercolor from 50 paintings series
I fell in love with Monet's big lily pond paintings, and the peace they continue to give although he painted them in the midst of World War 1.
I saw Juan Quick-to-See Smith's life sized paintings of canoes carrying so many symbols that spoke to me.
In early spring, I walked the Judd Creek Nature Trail. As I paused on a bridge over the stream, the evening light touched the bare trees and bushes in the distance, turning them a pale gold. Looking up stream through the shadows to the light, watching the water stream out from that light into the shadow, I was touched on many levels. It spoke of hope. The stream was like the Living Water that nourishes our souls and the light was like...the Nur, the Light of the Presence, the Divine Light.
I went home and went to work.
I took out the roll of paper I had been saving for so long—nearly two decades! I bought a 4'x6' piece of masonite for a backing. I cut a piece of paper from the roll, 4' high by wider than my arms can reach finger tip to finger tip. I stretched it onto the masonite, and leaned it up against my flat files. I mixed up watercolor paint in empty yogurt containers. I took out my big Chinese brushes and started painting.
I used masking tape and frisket to block out some of the tree trunks where I wanted to show the light shining on them. I splashed blue for the sky – and had to catch the drips as the paint ran down the painting and pooled on the floor. I blocked in the large areas of color with the largest brush.
I visited the bridge several times as spring progressed and the woods came alive. The ferns sprang up. The salmon berries blossomed. Evergreen trees put out new tender green needles like sensitive finger tips at the end of their branches. Ocean spray and elder berry bloomed. Salal put out new green leaves.
Some of this made it into the painting.
There are techniques in watercolor can only be done on a flat surface, so I cleared of my work table and got help laying the painting on it, masonite and all. That made it hard to move around my studio, but I could still get by if I pulled my stomach in. Now, how to finish it?
I penciled different compositions for the foreground on photos of the unfinished painting. I scanned my thousands of photos for inspiration and continued to walk the trail, photographing the emerging spring.
A stump from Burton Woods ended up in the painting, and so did a Larch with soft pink baby cones nestled among it's branches.
The painting is finished. Now what? How does this painting change or inform the direction my work will take now? Will I do more big paintings? Where could I keep them until I am ready to show them? Where will I show this one? Will it ever find a home? Who even has a wall big enough? It is too big, I think for most of my collectors and followers. It is too big to show at Anu Rana's; It needs a bigger space, and – dare I say it?--a bigger audience.
Am I...is this a sign I will be "playing bigger? Will I be stepping into a larger ...persona? I 'm good with that. A little scared, but good with it. Ok, maybe a lot scared. It's just stage fright though. I will get over it. An then perhaps I can bring Joy to more people, encourage more people to step into a world different from the one the media gives us. A world more real, more beautiful, more peaceful, more loving, more ALIVE!
Russian Impressionist Paintings
Russian Impressionist painting history
Beautiful work and marvelous journey!!!!!
Come visit me 😂
I love your painting as always
I love you ❤️