New Abstract Paintings

Releasing new paintings always gives me lots of feelings. Anxious, excited, relieved, nervous. These new original paintings are bright, colorful and full of a new energy I’m still slowly digesting. I’ve learned that this is kinda the process I go through each time I wrap up a series of paintings. Maybe that’s because I’m a slow processor or maybe I’m so deep into the “creating” that it take a few weeks to stand back and get a bigger understanding of what these paintings mean as a whole.

After I wrapped up the final painting I took a deep breath and a large step back so I could see what these paintings meant to me as an artist and what the work as a whole was trying to say.

I was left with these words…

“These paintings are inspired by new growth, the contrast of light and dark, the places of shadows and seasons of waiting. The moment that the warmth of the sun begins to touch the earth and new buds sprout up with ease and grace.”

I started these paintings at the end of last year, the days were darker and the studio began feeling like a little cocoon, a place for me to go and get quiet and do the hard work of sitting in silence and letting inspiration bubble to the surface. Then mustering up the courage to try and chase that inspiration in the hopes that my hands and heart begin speaking the same language so that I can step back and feel that internal sigh “it is good.”

Over the years of I have learned to lean into my intuition a bit more, to trust the paints my hands grab before my mind can over think. So when I step back and look at this new collection of paintings I wont lie, I’m a bit caught off guard by the bold and bright colors. It was like the winter version of myself was longing for the sun, for spring, for new growth.

The more I talked to people I began to hear a similar story, that the dark, the winter, the waiting and wondering felt like too much and the sun needed to shine. Even if it only touched at the edges of the shadows to bring a hope that a new season was coming.

So I guess in a way these paintings were for me for a season and for those who are longing for the sun to kiss their face. For the dark days of winter to become lighter and lighter until something new and surprising breaks through the ground and brings forth new growth.