new hope

There's been a half-finished piece sitting on my home studio wall, just waiting for me to finish it. I had started on it really quite some time ago - it was a new experiment, taking a hand-colored black & white to a mixed media collage on canvas - and it just hadn't been the right time to finish it, until this past Saturday.

Artwork in progress can be like that, sort of stuck, or waiting, or something, but not quite ready for more until all of the sudden. I guess you could argue that it's all in my head, but it's really the same thing - waiting for the right time to finish a certain piece. I suppose it could be called a creative block, but I like to think of it as just waiting for all the pieces to fall in place.

Anyway, Saturday was the day - I took the canvas & paint to my SAC studio, went out with my ArtQ group to Kanika's open studio, then had lunch, then came back to the SAC studio, then visited other artists a bit, all the time knowing it was coming down to the moment, sort of like a pregnant mother knowing the time is coming.

Finally I sat down and just started painting - not really knowing what was going to happen, but just feeling it and letting it happen - and then it seemed done - I did fine tune the edges just a bit later that night, and I've waited and watched to be sure, but it was really done right that afternoon and like a new mother, I'm so proud of my new baby, I just have to show you pictures.

I've titled it "Hope." You can see the hope breaking through like sunlight, which is how hope is sometimes, not all bright and flooding you with it's light, but just shining through around things, so you have to stop and look at it to realize it's there. Just peeking through a little at first, then it grows to something that lights your way and you know you'll make it all right...

To learn a little more about it, you can see my Tree Stories blog.