Landscape of my memory

A few pictures of my painting in progress. If it weren’t for this fever and cold, I would probably finish this painting in record time for me. I often spend up to s*ix months working on one painting, hanging it on the wall so I can sit and stare at it, wondering what to do next.

What is so exciting about this piece is that I am finally incorporating some of my beloved old stuff that sits in my studio – the bindings of old books, the historic photos of our ancestors, etc. I also love working with texture and colour, and developing glazes and depth to the different colours.

As I work through this not-to-scale aerial photo theme, I remember little incidents from every corner of the property – the snail shells I used to find under a certain tree, the china from “the old house” that turned up with the plough each spring, the time my sister’s skate fell through the pond’s thin ice. I wish I could capture all of those memories on this painting somehow, but of course it doesn’t work that way. But perhaps looking at the finished piece will inspire me to do some writing about those memories.

Although this is a very abstract painting, I like that I could put that 1915 photo of the barns and horses on the spot on my “aerial map” where those barns were situated.