unfinished paintings

Recently, it seems like my infrequent pop-ins have coincided with a later hour. I feel like I'm a little 'un sneaking cookies, except now that I'm all grown up I make and eat entire batches of cookies all by myself and so I've had to replace my deviousness with late night blogging. It's still somewhat delicious to be up late (later than I intended or should be awake), listening to the hum of the refrigerator with only a few lights on and my projects sprawled across the living room floor while I'm stretched on the couch.

Have I mentioned that I'm in an oil painting class this semester? Well, I am. These are two of the paintings that I've been working on. I had a brilliant idea to photograph my progress since I feel like from the first to the last brush stroke there is a big evolution and sometimes I love things about my paintings before they're anywhere near completed. (Side note: The paintings are still not finished but look very different from these pictures and I have yet to take any more pictures of them.) It's fun to celebrate success; even when that success is still in progress.

My profound advice for the day: Go do something naughty. It's tasty.

"the sky was the color of breakfast"

I live in a place of two worlds.

There is the material world that we all live in and see and feel, and then there is another place. It's less tangible to me at this point but it is just as real. I feel it in the air on the uppermost layer of my skin. It pushes on my consciousness at odd times, when my thoughts are firmly here and now but are beguiled away by another force. It is a world of images and colors, hopes, dreams, stories and genius. Trying to describe it feels like the taste of a word that your tongue tries to form but can quite reach or remember.

Every day I build it, break it, change it. Some people can't see this world. They're not bad people but I ache for them. For what they unwittingly miss out on. For how blind they are to the ephemeral reality around them.

I will create a place for them. And give them what their eyes cannot see.

Picking up a paint brush, something magical happens. Not on the canvas. The change occurs inside of me as I hold one implement of creation. Right now it is just a sketched a scene in water across the canvas but I saw so much more.