Art

I found this little joy nugget amidst the dross one normally finds online. @ehimeora distills what I have been trying to do with my writing the last year and a half (almost two years if you can believe it) and with my art for over the last decade. I’m giving my pain (and joy) a place to live outside of me. This past January, I did a series of watercolor paintings that felt very much to me like meditations or prayers in a dark chapel. January in Walla Walla seemed like a very cold, dark chapel. This spring and summer, there has been joy and delight but also tumult and pain–a mixed bag is what I typically say to folks. Perpetual mixed bag.

I’ve started a series of five really large paintings (36″x48″), the counterpart or maybe continuation of the January watercolors. Here’s the first of those five. I call it “Like You Mean It,” a phrase that has an abundance of meaning for me and hopefully the layers and intensity of the colors and brushstrokes evoke that for you, too. Or maybe something else entirely. That’s the joy of art. I put my mixed bag of emotions out in the world and maybe it resonates with you, a chord struck, a link in space and time that connects us. And maybe not.