Behind the Paintings

Today I’d love to share with you the story and process of my new work, “The Ties That Bind” from my latest series, “Can I Hear Me Now?”.

Thank you for allowing me to share my story with you.

THE TIES THAT BIND
36x36, Acrylic, Chalk and Thread on Canvas

I picked up my phone and started playing his songs. Songs that were never the focus of remembered childhood scenes, but played in the background. Sounds that amplify a memory, that years later give it an anchor point to come back to. As I honed in on one song, another would come to mind. I listened fully to song after song as I drove for hours on end. I began noting internally the way they made me feel, the memories they evoked, until I knew it was time to begin.

I allowed myself complete freedom to explore, to pursue the canvas head on, without planning, without measuring, without my finely crafted borders and clean edges. It wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t the goal. Instead, to spend the entirety of the creation of this piece meditating on my father, his life, mine, of our roles in one another’s. How pivotal, how key to one another’s identity and self-worth. How for so many years we mirrored each other, how I grew to follow his path, and later to take timid but hopeful, risky but calculated footsteps down an alternate lane.

As I worked his songs played for me.

The song that played in the first movie we saw together. 

The song we danced to at my wedding. 

The song that reminded him of the kind of father he didn’t want to be. 

The song that reminded me of the kind of daughter I wanted to be.

The song that played when I’d watch him smile playfully at my mom, with an ease and weightless care like I imagined he did when they first met, unable to even speak one another’s languages. 

The song I’d play after he grounded me.

The song that played as he drove me to a sleepover, the lyrics muffled to his ears but clearly in tune with my teenage heart. 

The song that makes me think everything will be ok, even when its currently not.

The song that played when he took me to visit a potential college, willing to help me explore even though it was the furthest away from home.

The song that played at our first concert together.

The song that inspired his nickname for me, and that years later I’d sing to rock my son to sleep. 

As their words flowed onto the canvas, I sat in their sound, in the sounds it would create in my chest, often at bat with the sounds in my head. Memories of a beautiful sweet childhood. Memories of misunderstandings or miscommunication when childhood shifted to adolescence shifted to adulthood. How the music now softened these misunderstandings, how time and experience made way for perspective, how independence made clear the interdependence. 

As they hummed, I tuned into the realization that life can be painfully short, and regrets long lived. That operating on defense by default ends the game before it begins. That forgiveness of others allows you to forgive the one worth forgiving most. That the uncomfortable memories pour down less when compassion reigns. That barriers were not meant to block the path, but to make way for a new one. 

The words in the songs, the words upon the canvas, stirring up my own - to say aloud where I hold fear, where I need grace, where I need help to hold space.

To make it clearly known a beloved will always be loved, that good memories triumph, that effort will always be seen, and intention always felt.   

Bound by a never ending pursuit of love and respect, of understanding and acceptance, of effort and letting go.

These are the ties that bind us.

THE TIES THAT BIND
36x36, Acrylic, Chalk and Thread on Canvas
[sold]

See more from the new series, “Can I Hear Me Now?”