This painting came out of another interesting process at an art retreat I attended in the early summer of 2018. We had 3 minutes to put paint or paper on our canvas. We then passed the canvas to the person on our right. More paint, paper, marks, whatever, and then it got passed along to another person. In total, each canvas had 9 contributors. All of the canvases were then turned faced down and we each picked a canvas that we then completed. What a transformation! I will have to write a blog post with pictures about this one!

My intention for the weekend retreat was to “just be”. I arrived at the retreat exhausted after a very busy couple of months—lots of family visiting at one time for a nephew’s wedding, preparing and being in my first Open Studios event, working on the business side of my art business, plus starting a new job just 4 months earlier, etc! It is fitting that the paintings I created at the retreat all had a theme of “calm”. The universe was listening!

This is an original mixed media painting on a 12x12 canvas board. Made with acrylic paint, paint pens, paper, gel medium, etc.