The Shape of Healing

Some paintings get planned. This one got poured.

It started as a splash of pigment, cobalt and turquoise thrown across the canvas, magenta pooled in the corner. For a while, that was the whole painting, untethered, lost, and a little out of control.

I made this piece about the hard seasons, not the middle of them. Where everything is muddy and dripping and you cannot tell what is happening. Where the days run together and you stop noticing what color anything is. The part right after.

The chaos is still underneath. I did not paint over it and pretend it never happened. Then something or someone stepped in. Wide teal strokes and transparent lavender laid over the mess. Not to hide it or correct it, just to hold it. More pieces of the story, one impression after another, until the same canvas stopped looking hopeless and started looking like it was simply unfinished. Yet still going somewhere. Shape emerged from the blurred hues, and with it, edges that let the light in.

What is underneath is never the end of the story. The layers on top rewrite the ending every time the brush gets picked back up.

The shape of healing looks a lot like accepting what spilled while knowing the new strokes were just waiting to be painted. They were impossible to see through the puddles, yet built anyway, one layer at a time, into something greater than imagined. The version you are proud to hang on the wall.