I can’t decide if this looks more like hanging swirls, flowers on a vine, or delicious lollipops!  After many, many layers this is what has emerged in my latest painting!  I really like the bold pop of the turquoise circles with the multi-colored background behind it.  But what is this painting really about for me?  Lately my life has been a swirl of change.  Sometimes change can make you feel like you are barely hanging on, twisting in the wind.  Sometimes change makes you feel that you are softly swaying, attached by the roots and vines in your life that connects you to others.  Change usually makes me feel that I have to spiral inward, reconnect with my own soul, and then I can shine outwards again.  I believe this is what I have tried to capture in this painting.

Here is where it started!  In my Flora Bowley Bloom True e-course the challenge was to blindfold yourself and paint with your hands.  Seriously.  It was AWESOME.  Very freeing.  So I squeezed some paint out onto my palette, loaded up my i-pod, and fingerprinted blindfold!  Can you see the finger swipes!?!

Time to add some cool colors – an explosion of blues and greens.  I have no idea where this canvas is heading….but throwing color down with wild abandon makes me feel like a child at play.  I can see the energy in this – the bold marks, the aliveness of the paintbrush moves.

Adding more layers, covering things up, letting things shine through.  As I was painting this, relationships around me were starting to shift and change.  From my family, to my friends, to my boyfriend….what I knew one day was different the next.  Just like this canvas, the direction before was not the direction it went next.

Adding blacks and whites immediately creates depth.  I can  see anger coming out in this.  I can see footprints of pain in the sea of change I was experiencing.  I can see this canvas begin to take on a life of its own, responding to the intuitive emotion pouring out of me.  I can also see the white fighting the black….as my hope and internal sunshine was fighting the hurt and betrayal I was feeling.

Adding layers, turning the canvas upside down and right side up.  On its side.  Backover again.  Trying to find the right way to proceed, trying to find the right way to paint.  The swirls of pistachio color seemed to leap from my paintbrush onto the canvas.  A swirl of emotion, but the color feeling hopeful and light.  Grounding the swirls with the dark vines.  Giving the hope roots to cling to.  Seeing a picture of growth begin to emerge.

And finally finishing it up.  Adding the lollipop like flowers.  Letting bursts of color in the background shine through.  Blending areas to draw my eye towards harmony rather than discord.  Want to know something funny?  I decided that this was the direction I liked it best…the flowers hanging upside down.  Then when I grabbed it to sign it, I signed it the wrong way!  So now my signature is in the upper left hand corner and upside down.  I think that is kind of ironic!  When change happens, things feel upside down.  I guess my signature even wanted to carry that theme through!  Makes me giggle.