I finished this painting a few months into last year (2025) and I’ve shared it before here on Muddy Colors in The Creative Safe Space. Excuse the reshare, but this is different. Things were moving in strange and frantic ways around that time, and I had had some difficult time finishing up this painting. I had reached out to the good folks at Rehs Galleries/Rehs Contemporary and we had some discussion about it. I talked with Howard Rehs in regards to varnish and longevity. As always, he was kind and easy-going about sharing a whole bunch of helpful information, and he made me feel a lot less tense about the possibility that I may not be able to send it their way for the potential to have them include it in upcoming shows. We had some laughs, and it was a great and informative conversation, as so often was the case when having the chance to chat with him for a bit. Little known at that time, it would be the last conversation I’d have with him.
This is not about the painting, and this painting is not about that specific experience, but strangely, it feels significant that our last conversation was about this painting. In that conversation, Howard had helped me to feel hopeful after I thought I may have really lost it. The life of the painting, and its existence in terms of the subject overall, is a morphing of sorrow and joy, of strength and vulnerability, an acknowledgement and understanding of a letting go in order to move forward – to stand in the power of that, not to forget who we’ve been, but to see that we carry all of what we’ve experienced, who has connected with us, what forms we’ve taken and who and what has shaped us, and now as we are, in a formation of what makes us who we are as we move into a newness and a new seeing and acceptance of ourselves. That we can leave parts of ourselves to be sorted out in the ether and within us, as we grow into a new becoming that was formed in some way by those parts and in some ways by the growth within and a wondering of what is beyond our outer shell and all of what we’ve only already known, grateful for what it all has taught and given us.
Forgive me for the run-ons and possible inaccuracies of grammar and punctuation, but I suppose this is sometimes the essence of life as I experience it, and how my paintings also express it. It all congeals and co-mingles in this layering and overlapping sort of expression that seems difficult to articulate with accuracy and correctness at times.
I wanted to share my gratitude for Howard Rehs and the Rehs family for helping me to feel seen and understood, in this way that I express myself through paint and imagery that pours from within and out onto the canvas. I am often, if not always, unsure of what will take shape from the marks I make and layer and scrape away and build onto again, but feeling seen in a way that allows me to express it in all the messiness and unknowns that it reveals is a boon to my voicing it in ways that feel most familiar. And in my humble writings here on Muddy Colors, I am able to say thank you for the opportunity, support and encouragement that sharing and revealing the messy life happenings and unfolding unknowns in the form of paintings has done for me. It is life-giving in the way that carries on forever.
Thank you.
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