This listing is for the ORIGINAL PAINTING titled, "Strength Matters Most".  This is an acrylic painting on heavy white Bristol board paper.  Measuring approximately 4" x 4".

(Enlarged to show details.)

(How this painting might look framed.  This piece is being offered unframed.  This is just one example of how you might choose to frame your new art once it arrives.)  

About this painting: I have been painting for so many years now, and I have been so prolific, that I am rarely surprised anymore by my work.  But this piece surprises me.  I have known for a while that I want to try creating contemporary expressive abstract works with words as the central elements.  I just has no idea anything like this would come along.  I love this painting.  It feels like a new friend.  I love the layers and the free, open, emotional application of color.  There is a wildness to this piece.  A sense of freedom.  And fun.  Which is entirely welcome in a painting about how pain touches us, teaches us, and then fades in our memory.  Leaving behind a newfound sense of what we are capable of.  How strong we are. 

Take that gift.  Take the strength and use it to build a better more powerful understanding of who you are.  And appreciate the pain for what she has brought to your attention.

Strength.  Bold and colorful and loosey-goosey and unself-conscious.  Strength.

This is a good painting to have around you.  More and more, I believe we are surrounded by awful news and crippling messages.  From the media, from marketers, every which way.  My new paintings are a counter-balance to those messages.  I am trying to be a marketer - an advertising agency - for our souls.  For the messages we really need to see.  For the headlines and commercials that remind us of what we have instead of what we supposedly need or what we may have tragically lost.  Because we ARE blessed to be alive today.

Note:  These newest paintings on paper were taped off before painting.  Areas beyond the painted parts were covered with fancy artist masking tape to keep them pristine.  I have chosen to show the entire image in the scans here, including the edging that was right up against the tape.  I love that area and the tiny glimpses sometimes available there into how the painting evolved.  If I were to frame these new pieces, I would leave that showing myself.  But you could choose to cover those edges with the mat if you prefer smooth uniform borders.  Here I can share an example of what I mean using close-ups of one edge of the painting titled, "Thawing".

(This example shows the edge that was up against the tape.  This piece began with a coat of black gesso.  Then the bottom area was initially green.  The top was golden.  Eventually, the green was covered by a warm pink.  And THAT layer was then covered with washes of a light lavender shade.  You could choose to mat this piece so the edge area shows like this.  OR....

you could choose to cover the edges when you have the piece matted so that all borders appear smooth and finished.

Again, these examples are from the painting titled, "Thawing".  They are NOT from the painting shown in this listing.)

About the Words Series: My whole life, I have seen words as art.  As symbols.  I included words in my earliest works.  Words were in my thesis paintings in college.  Words are in many of my favorite paintings.  I am not sure where I found inspiration for words in art.  I remember seeing works by Jasper Johns at an early age and appreciating the way he included numbers and letters.  Then in college, I fell in love with Jenny Holzer's work.  And Barbara Krueger's work.  But I think my need for words in art may go back to the summer I spent reading one book after another when I was ten or eleven or so.  Words became my friends and family then.

Over the years, many folks have told me to leave words our of my art.  They said my work should speak for itself without the words.  But I do not include words as a means of amplifying messages that ought to be voice through painted elements.  I include words as objects.  As integral parts of the composition.  Again, as symbols.  My paintings are paintings first and foremost.  Symbolic and expressive and emotional, I hope.

The paintings in this series feel like blessings to me.  House blessings.  Office blessings.  Protective.  Proclamations.  Describing the ambitions or values or experiences of a place or a people.

Click here to see the entire Words Series so far.