Everything In Its Place

“A place for everything, and everything in its place” – proverb

Everything In Its Place
encaustic mixed media
24×24 inches

This is the last painting I completed that will be heading over to Kindlon Hall later this week for my show “Tactile Spirit”. When I started this painting I really felt like I had been in constant juggling mode. Between preparing for the show, preparing for the workshop, doing my business taxes, figuring out summer activities for my kids, to figuring out what to make for dinner, the list goes on and on, there would be mornings where I’d wake up and be in a panic with the thought of how am I going to get it done?!

But rather than being frozen in place, panic can spur me into action with my to-do lists and forces me to get organized. Actually at an opening last fall, I spoke to Kathleen Waterloo, a fellow FUSEDChicago member and a wonderful person on top of that, about the show opportunity and candidly asked her how do I get it all done? And she was so great to actually break it down for me week by week and made it seem actually manageable. Sometimes it just takes a calm voice of reason to make me feel confident that I could do it.

But what I have learned is that even when I have so much to get done and prepare for, that if I have everything organized and in its place, even if it’s just a mental thing, then I can handle it. It’s more the unknown, the unnamed, the chaos of undetermined tasks that do me in. If I name it, then it can get done. And waking up at 5 in the morning a few times to get some work done before the kids were up helped too.

While 24×24 inches is not a large painting, it is on the large end for me and I really enjoy painting on a much larger surface area. I feel like I have so much more freedom in exploring the surface. I am looking forward to doing more in the future. After this painting I think I will be taking a break from the bowls. I’m not going to say it’s the last, because you just never know. Right now though, I am feeling pulled back towards my nature based paintings. We shall see..

detail