seasons: W I N T E R - Now available { collect here }

It is with a humble and grateful heart I finally share this creative journey of mine through my season of wintering. A labor of love, a bit of a becoming, a painful drudge at times, a breezy flow at others… all in all, a deep dive to find the beauty in my least favorite season and life chapter. I hope it touches you as much as it transformed me to paint.

Closing thoughts…

It’s sometimes easy to look back on this winter season, literally speaking and today at least, with a perspective that puts some of the most challenging parts - the especially gray, cold, dark, icy ones - in the rear view. The weather has already hit 75 and sunny here in North Carolina several times, many of the spring flowers and trees have already bloomed and turned to green well ahead of schedule. For all intents and purposes, it very much feels like springtime. And has for a little while now. Bringing with it the hope of newness, life is moving on to the next season…as life does. Some of the most grueling days of winter treading water while fighting the current feel slightly more distant. Somedays it feels still ever present.

The shift…

I’m especially grateful for the “ahead of schedule” spring this year…the first day after Day Light Savings when the sun was out until after 7pm, I felt like I had won the lottery.

Within literal days of my mom’s services I received, and joyously so, several exciting life chapter announcements and updates from loved ones. Jarring sharp lefts in some text threads for me to be honest. Less than a week and even though my world had come to a screeching obliteration, life had already moved forward…Life is funny like that, the tow of joy and grief together. It knocked the wind out of me. It was the very moment I realized that perhaps I had yet to go through the hardest part of this. And that was daunting. Seasons…

So, here we are again in a literal sense. The changing of the guard. It’s a change I’m excited for, grateful for, relieved for… and that is because of the weight that winter carried, this winter especially. It will always be a sore, bruised part of my heart I will carry with me. Especially sensitive to brush up against this winter, but the only way is through. And if there is one thing my mom taught me it is to find the joy wherever you are.

When I paint I don’t clean my palettes until I am done with a “series.” Collective gasp. At least with water colors and oils, I let the colors slowly collect, meld, blend, intertwine, my silent rebellion against my type A tendencies, and I build my works off of the remnants of what is left there from my last studio session before adding more and adding new. Some works are entirely painted off of what remains. You’d be surprised at how much you can build off of what was left behind. The four figure studies in this collection, for instance, were entirely done off of palette remnants. No new paints added. There is a lesson in there. On winter.

Brushstrokes are looser, freer now, subjects based on the feelings of that day. An in the moment refining of being where your feet are. Let’s continue shall we? Here we go spring…

Talk soon.

XX,

Christina