Everything

I don't know where to begin describing this piece - it contains so many personal thoughts, theories, feelings, and ideas. I guess it is a self-portrait in a way of my life up until now. It contains the colours of my 1970's childhood. It was delineated by colour, green cup for me, brown cup for my brother. 1970s garish colour fabulousness. Colour that excites your eyes and your heart. I also paint how I live my life, with not much of a plan, more of a follow the trail and see what happens. That's why I love watercolour and painting abstracts, because I just never know where it will lead me. I'm always adapting and problem solving depending on how the paint turns up on the page. If I fuck something up, I have to figure out how to fix it, or make it into something good. But in this painting, every time that voice in my head told me to stop or that it was terrible, I countered it with, keep going! paint more! And ironically, I love this painting because sometimes I look at it and it looks terrible, and that is totally fine. But when the light catches it in just the right way, with all it's layers of metallic paint, it's utterly glorious. And really it's how I see the world, ugly and beautiful in the right light. I'm trying to paint the light, not a religious kind of light, but just the sunlight, and how beautiful it can be, like on days that it's just the right warmth, and when you close your eyes and turn your face to it, it fills your brain and body with warm joy. Or when you see it in just the right angle shining through leaves or flowers or a window it's the best thing ever and it just makes your heart skip with excitement like your eyes and heart are talking directly to each other. And then there are the details, all the details. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by all the details, and sometimes I am embraced and humbled by them. I'm humbled being just a small detail in it all, in the Universe I am but a spec. And we are all just little specs that join together to compose everything else. I enjoyed that feeling of being visually overwhelmed to the point that my brain stops ruminating, and just enjoys floating around just witnessing what is in front of me, like in a crystal cave or an infinite forest of green or an artwork. And I am also humbled by the infinity of information in the world, there is so much to learn and to be curious about. So many interconnections and inter-dependencies that I often wonder how anyone can be sure about emphatically knowing anything. And it's also a reflection of my years taking photo's of the details, I love macro photography and playing with the depth of field, and I feel like this painting has some of that in the layers I've painted. And it is both chaos and compartmentalised compositions. You could spend hours looking at it, at the tiny worlds inside worlds. Connections. Relationships. Contrasts. Details. Light. Colour. Compositions. COMPLEXITY. I started painting this in October 2023 and I guess all brain cells are firing in these horrifying times. It is a WILD time to be alive. But I am ever so grateful that I am.