Tomorrow is the first day of February and I am spending time today, reflecting on the experience of painting during Thanksgiving week. Somehow I managed to shop, cook, entertain, and still complete a painting while also preparing for a studio show just one week later. On that Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving Day, I was busy in the kitchen preparing food for a small family feast. But while the veggies were sauteing and in between cooking the various dishes, I was in the studio adding paint to my latest creation. I managed to embed studio time in a day focused on cooking. By the end of the day, I felt nearer to actually being able to complete the painting I had begun more than a year before. Then, while other people spent Black Friday shopping, I was able to work on and finish up that painting.

“Effervescence” was inspired by a vision I had of the mist created when opening up a bottle of carbonated water. Each mist particle represented one of us and we were all connected in this sea of bubbles, swirling around one another, playing our role in the whole of our shared existence. We were one, together, rather than individuals, separate from the whole.

I began working on “Effervescence” in the fall of 2018, almost immediately after the concept took shape in my mind. But soon after I painted the two cloth layers, I put it aside with too many ideas on how it might be developed. Over a year later, a friend encouraged me to return to the painting. And I’m so glad she did. It was only then that I had the idea for the background to mimic the cutouts in the top cloth. So I got busy cutting holes in paper before adhering the paper to the back canvas. That’s when I was finally able to move the painting forward towards completion.

I added the finishing touches with a quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe... "In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it, and over it."

“Effervescence” and I took a journey together and I embrace the bond developed in the process. A relationship is created between the artist and his/her creation. When I’m working on a painting, it’s as if a dialog develops between us, with the painting sharing its needs, making suggestions, providing guidance. All I have to do is be open to listening. We spend time in the studio together. It’s a shared experience. And when a painting takes longer to complete, the opportunity is there to create a closer bond, just as in any relationship. “Effervescence” was signed and wired in time for the studio show and it was one of the first to be sold.

And…I have to just add: For an artist, any day is a day to create, whether it’s a weekend, vacation day, or even the week of a major holiday.