Sturdy Enough To Carry the Love

"Sturdy Enough to Carry the Love" -  mixed media on gallery wrapped canvas, 20" x 20 " x 1.25".  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.

​Can it be -- that all our lives we're just oddly shaped cups and mugs; sometimes clear, sometimes not, sometimes chipped, sometimes too hot to hold?  Can it be -- the whole sorry struggle for a self is just to have something sturdy enough to carry the love? - MARK NEPO, The Exquisite Risk

​Artists spend a lot of time in their internal dialogue.  The crux of the role of an artist is to take what is inside and put it out there, allowing it to touch another in a way that connects with that other person's own inner dialogue.  In one afternoon in the studio, I go from hopeless failure to enthusiastic painter to inspired genius to clumsy oaf.  And back again - often many times. There is a bit of all those in every painting.   The struggle to paint is also the struggle for a self.   Chipped edges and all.

Sturdy Enough to Carry the Love

I like to think that the constant internalization  of artists makes us sturdy enough to carry the love,  to take it in and pour it out again for others to savor.   As I watch the artists in  my own creative tribe navigate the waters of  current global and personal change, my jaw simply hangs open in awe of their fearlessness, optimism, openness and generosity.  It tumbles out in the art, wraps the world in its arms and whispers hey, here's a hug.​ 

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About the painting: Some stories are meandering....this painting is one of those stories.  Beginning as an e-course exercise in abstracted earthy colors based on an inspiration image, it took a few detours.  It wasn't until a subsequent exercise in Diebenkorn glazes that the lightbulb went off and the abstraction fell into place.  Acrylic, watercolor crayons, colored pencil and Artgraf.  And a whole lot of persistence!  (Many thanks to  Carl Stoveland Photography for permission to riff off of one of his incredible images)

first inspiration photo

this is where I lost the plot

second inspiration photo (courtesy of Carl Stoveland)

a plot, but not abstracted enough