Last spring, my sister asked me to enter an art show with her. I'd been out of the painting game for a while and didn't have so much as a tube of burnt umber, so I hit Michaels for the essentials. But even with a restocked arsenal, I didn't want to switch gears from making jewelry. I still participated in the show; I just used paintings I'd made a long time ago. Yet the pile of new paints and canvasses haunted me the following summer, fall, and winter until one day I said, "Enough! No paint will dry up on my watch!" So I hunkered down in my cozy craft room and proceeded to bust out my brushes. The above not-quite-symmetrical, day-glo, sugar-fueled dreamscape was the result. The husband asked if the two suns in the sky looking down at the ice cream were Ben and Jerry. It wasn't without a little regret that I admitted this wasn't the case. I didn't have a plan in mind when I was painting, but the finished product looks like the packaging for a Japanese board game. Which is to say, wonderful. I had so much fun making it! I took my time, working on it on and off for two weeks while I watched TV. I forgot how zen painting can be, how peaceful yet satisfying it is to cover white space with color to create something new.
I'm not the only painter in my household. You may recall that the husband paints houses. And he's got the brushes to prove it.
Clearly, he too has whimsy and is a collector of colorful things. He might not like that I said he has whimsy, though. It doesn't sound very manly. Then again, earlier today when we were in Lowe's, he was drooling over a mitre saw. So, maybe mentioning that makes up for it.
Next time, I'll paint frosting-topped pine trees around a blue blob and call it Tastykake Lake. Because I live closer to Pennsylvania than Vermont and grew up on Butterscotch Krimpets instead of Chunky Monkey.
Not that I'm opposed to painting a monkey swinging from a Red Vine. I'd call it Snack Attack.
Good thing I have six more canvases.