Processing Change Through A Painting

It begins and ends with love.

When I first learned I was pregnant, I was lost; overwhelmed by swirling thoughts of anxiety and fear. I sought insight from dear friends and internet strangers, and one idea from these searches struck me: No matter the fear or anxiety or dread I felt, this Wee One was created by the stong and beautiful love I am lucky enough to share with Cohiba.

One of the ways I best understand the majesty of God is to remember that God is love. Therefore, by extension, I don’t believe anything created out of love is bad or wrong, because it’s from God. I can have faith in something created in love, because things created in love are only good for me. This is one of the foundational stones of my faith.

Remembering this, I still felt like I needed to express it and decided to put it in a painting. It took me some time to do, I think as my levels of acceptance progressed. The following photos describe my process and thinking about it.

1. First iteration: I don’t have a photo of it, but it pretty much looked like the one below, but just with letters, and just in the brown of the “E.” Just white and brown, and it stayed like that a long time. I just had to keep reminding myself of the basic idea: Love.

2. Second iteration: I don’t have a picture of that, either, but I painted the LOV different colors. It was not energetic enough, so I ventured into more expression.

3. Third iteration: I thought I would add different media to it to add some depth. I decorated the E, thinking about highlighting it some more.  Wee One’s name starts with an “E,” and I started to think about her looking at this, about creating with her and telling her the story of it.

4. Fourth iteration: I changed my mind about the newspaper strips and put some other ideas on there as well as other painted designs. I decided I would put it in the nursery and give it to her, and I wanted to imbue it with ideas I want to teach her. I thought about scripture.

5. Fifth iteration: I started getting more creative with different mediums and where I’d add ithem.  I was beginning to make it more like an art journal page.  I added some writing and ideas I wanted her to be around, and I tried a paint-spraying technique I’d seen online.

6. Final. I didn’t like where this was going. I wasn’t feeling any energy or beauty. I conceptualized a different way to lay out the word/s and pictures I could paint with it. He is the finished product:

Here’s a little closer to the detail

The white dot had originally been the center of the “O,” from a repositioning of the letters of “Love,” and I used it as the beginning of the color transition. I love color – the brighter the better, and merging color together – I think there’s so much movement in the transition and I love it. I want Wee One to be surrounded by color. The words are from 1 Corinthians 13 “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” This scripture was used in my and Cohiba’s wedding and it’s an idea I want Wee One to be familiar with. It’s also scripture I want her to know, and reading it over and over again will mean she’ll remember it.

This project completes one of the 51/51 Challenge.