All in Good Time

In 2020, a fellow painting friend passed away, beginning a process of grief and reflection that brought me back to painting. After lockdown subsided, quitting a corporate career, and becoming a parent, I got all new paints and began to revisit the years spent in the painting studio. I slowly created over a hundred swatches of color blends spread between 13 cards, a process first done in school alongside my lost classmate. The mourning process and subsequent rediscovery of painting allowed for reconnection with my college painting advisor and a close cohort who have fostered my reentry to the arts.

In 2024 I created my first heartfelt painting in over a decade, a small study of an iceberg off the coast of Iceland. I had planned to travel there and expected to return with photos of dramatic landscapes of somber water and ice, hoping to create more paintings from the experience. Prior to leaving for the trip I had done a study of my child’s hair for a larger portrait of her picking dandelions in the yard. Upon visiting Iceland, I was touched to find dandelions everywhere, and to discover a cultural reverence for the dandelion among people there. This flower is a symbol of perseverance in harsh climate, grit, and the refusal to stop blooming. It is survival. As a mother and artist, I was deeply inspired by this and hope to follow the vision of this tenacious flower, this small glowing sun, in good time.