Found

Found

16x20 Oil on Canvas

This is my first painting after years of pause.  There is a little bit of a story behind this one if you are interested.

The Story

I recently found my biological family using DNA and a popular genealogy website.  At Christmas I received the most beautiful flower arrangement I have ever seen. It was full of evergreen branches and red roses. I saved two of them and let them dry. I have been keeping them on the window sill to remind me how awesome it was. 

This painting has a lot of personal symbolism in it. The spools of thread double as both the way our DNA wraps around and it represents the seamstress gene I got from my paternal Grandmother. The roses are two of a kind, from the same bush, but living on different levels of existence. The spool without a rose is just getting started, much like our relationship. The white chord is the instinctual pull my father and I had to find each other

This painting is going to be a favorite of mine for a while. It has emotional value. Not only did I find a family that is better than I could hope for, I found myself, my bush, my thread, my art.   

The future is hopeful and full of excitement. This is what every adoptee hopes to find when they search out their roots. 

On my Easel

On the Easels

16x20 Oil on Canvas

24x36 Oil on Canvas

I wanted to put a glaze on my still life, but the paint has not dried yet.  So I opened up a new canvas and set it up near the mirror.  I am very rusty after not having spent any time doing art in the last year and a half.  These are not nearly as bad as I expected them to be.  I have done much worse when I was doing art every day.  Maybe maturity has made me slow down and really look at what I am doing.