Is-ness

"Is-ness" - mixed media on wood panel (plywood, uncradled) 24" x 28".   Available here and at Artfinder.

Even within our own lives, we tend to compare a happy time with a sad time, a time of ease with a time of struggle, and so, lose the overall richness of an evolving life that has an is-ness of its own.  MARK NEPO, The Exquisite Risk

I am trying not to compare things.

Not this week with last week.  Not pre-pandemic America with the wild, roiling unrest of now.  Not my art with the art of others.  Definitely not my hair with yours, beautifully coiffed reader.  

​A rich, evolving life is messy, but necessary. 

Is-ness

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​About the painting:  This piece was inspired by a rough sketch in india ink, gesso and oil pastel  on paper (left) during the color course last month with Pauline Agnew.  The assignment was to take the sketch and bring it alive with color during "fire" week.   Though I love the bleak starkness of the sketch most of all, I am intrigued by the blaze within the colorized version, which was achieved with watercolor crayons thickly applied and smeared on top of the acrylic underpainting.  The entire piece was then sealed with a spray fixative to keep the crayon in place.