The Letters Series, II base layers

⚠️WORK IN PROGRESS ⚠️ I followed the bears
and they led me to the sea. Pt IV
🐻🌊

This is a really tough one to share
I dont know where my work is going to end up
but I know if I don’t share it
it’s going nowhere.

Personally, exploring difficult feelings is the equivalent of being vulnerable to the creative process. Surrender and allow that content to guide the paintbrush. That’s how I understand what’s going on in my internal world: giving those pulverized raw garbage feelings form- not just in the lengths and widths of the canvas but the depth of value, color and found,or, in this series, mostly lost edges.

All the colors on my palette come out of the tube almost black; Shadow green, Prussian blue, burnt umber. I scoured them all with zinc white and a stitch of cad yellow.

I’m fighting off my own darkness mixing oil paint. You know that strategy? Maybe if I can lighten the values, they will light the rest of my world.
Maybe. Probably not.

I followed the bears knowing very little other than

I wanted a lightness,
a softness,
a tenderness.

I want what I have never been able to hold
and you should know by now
everything I ever let go of has claw marks

If I can paint them, I can see them and I can know them, in a sense. And no, they might not be mine forever

but for a moment
I forget about everything that ever took them away from me.

I’ve got more work to do here and even more to say.
Thank you for listening. It really means the world.
Oil on canvas on hope 18x24”.