Incoming Moon-Tide

Incoming Moon-Tide

"Incoming Moon-Tide" - acrylic on wood panel (baltic birch, uncradled), 11" x 18" x .5".  Ready to hang (back has been wired for hanging).  Available here and at Artfinder.

​Freedom has a taste. It’s wild and untamed. The trick is to walk around all day long and roll that taste around in your mouth. When you speak, some of the wild dribbles out, but it’s okay because you’ll make more. At night, when you lay your head on your pillow, you feel the wild sloshing around in your brain and pooling behind your eyelids like an incoming moon-tide so that, when you open them, the wild gushes into the world.  - BRIAN RUTENBERG

Here we are amidst the tumult of quarantine and chaos in a country made raw by recent events.  Even in my sweet Portland, curfews were imposed and peaceful protests turned ugly.  And here at home,  a story of love came to an abrupt and unexpected end.  

It's a lot to process.

And so I head to the studio, where paint provides solace and a means to touch feelings without being overwhelmed.   There is freedom in the paint.

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​About the painting:  this is a paint-over.  Underneath is a Diebenkorn-inspired study (now obliterated).  Using one of the color palettes from Pauline Agnew's e-course and resisting (RESIST RESIST!) the urge to add a hundred more colors to the piece; scratching into the paint with a chopstick to create texture in the hair...trying to capture a feeling of determination and strength.