When I send work out into the world for various shows, the hope is that the work will go home to a new collector. But that doesn’t always happen. And so there’s swapping in and out. Work may stay at a gallery for a while and then new work is sent and older work comes back. And that that work may go to another gallery or another show. etc. etc. etc. Sometimes I’ll just pop it into my online shop. Recently I got some small pieces back. One went into my shop. But then the other, well, I decided to take it out of its frame because I needed to use the frame for a piece that recently sold and I wanted to frame it for the collector.
In my studio world, once a piece comes out of a frame, it’s almost like it becomes fair game, for better or worse. Anyway, long story, short, I ended up taking some India Ink to this piece. I was just oging to hit the pink….but then I couldn’t stop myself and did the whole panel. And I gotta be honest, this iteration is exactly what the original title was trying to get at.
I originally wrote this about the original piece back in August last year:
“I was having trouble coming up with the title for this. Then I found myself outside in my garden and a butterfly floated my way and landed on flower. And its wings were tattered. It was pretty amazing to me that it was still flying, honestly. I couldn’t help but wonder about the journey this creature had been on. And how fragile those wings are, and yet how strong and resilient they must be to fly how ever many miles and to withstand all the elements. Strong and fragile. I wanted to ask the butterfly, tell me, please, what you know about fragile strength and how to keep going.”