How many times have I sat down to a blank canvas armed with an idea, only to discover the final image was nothing like what I had anticipated? Many artists are great at planning out their images and producing a final product that is identical to the real thing. On rare occasions, this has happened to me. More often than not, I start out with an idea and when I finish it has taken on a life of its own and turns into something entirely unexpected.
Take for example my painting Wildfire. It started out as the beginning of a wooden water tank. This water tank would have had a water trough for sifting through sand to look for different treasures hidden in the Earth. For some reason though, it was just not coming out right. At that moment it just felt wrong. So, I sat there staring at the beginning of this raw image and my hand. My hand somehow became a focal point. I started sketching out the lines of my hand on the canvas with my paintbrush. All the while thinking I’ll paint over it later. But then a flash of an image popped in my mind. The image of this butterfly I had seen months prior in the woods. I remembered wishing I could hold it. And so, I painted a hand then the thought of creation and nature and forest fires. The beauty of life overwhelmed my thoughts and before I knew it was painting fire with life in the flames. Conveniently that wooden water tank perfectly fit my bear in the corner. That was not planned. It just worked out perfectly and I realized only after it was painted. As it was almost finished there was something missing. Again, the butterfly flittered through my thoughts, only this time emerging to rest upon the palm of my painted hand as I had originally imagined.
When I finished, I sat back and thought, “Wow, the hand of creation like a tree of life, a wildfire.”
Hence the name, Wildfire and it is absolutely nothing like what I had planned on creating that day.
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