It Comes In Waves

This is a painting that came from my head/heart during an incredibly difficult week of loss and pain in our extended family. After getting the horrible news and helping Josh and Sarah ready their house and prepare to leave for Mississippi, I returned home with no idea of what to do next or how to even contemplate the news. 

I did not sleep at all that night and when I entered the studio to get to work I could not focus as feelings of grief for those that were left behind kept washing over me.  I eventually took the painting I was working on previously off the easel and replaced it with a 48x60-inch canvas.  I had no idea what it would be when I started it.  I squeezed out a pile of dark paint and nearly attacked the surface with my biggest brushes. It was just large dark angry nearly violent Franz Klein like angular abstract shapes. I was taking my frustration and the hurt I felt for those I loved out using the tools I usually reserved for creating beauty. Slowly a rough seascape began to miraculously appear, then jagged rocks.  The next day storm clouds revealed themselves.  On the third day a way through the rocks opened up and waves started to roll their way toward the shore. As the week progressed and approached the funerals and Josh filled me in on all of the love and support being shown in his hometown, it began to take form, and eventually, light and color found their way into the painting. 

It is called "It Comes In Waves." It really mimicked how I was feeling and interpreting the sadness.  It would subside for a little while then rise back up.  At first, my heart was broken for Jessica of course, then for Josh, who lost his only sibling.  Then I would think of little Logan and how he lost his two cousins. and on and on, wave after wave.  Eventually, I was thinking about the other driver and how this will affect him and his family.  Grief and pain and loss are like the ocean in that we can not know the reach and directions it will be felt.  I have never used my art to react to something so difficult.  Painting has always been there for me and I really appreciate that I could sit and feel and quietly contemplate.

In the end I had created something moody and beautiful.  But I did not know what to do with it.  It was huge and had so much psychic weight attached to it.  My wife and I decided we should not keep it, the gift was in its creation for me, not in the final results.  I ended up selling it through one of my galleries and chose to let the buyers make up their own stories of what it means to them. I was able to make prints for the immediate family members as a way to show that they were being thought about from 2300 miles away.