And I said to myself…seriously, what *is* this??

 While I was on heavenly Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington renting a house with my college gal pals, I made a small canvas, and I was not. Pleased. AT ALL with how it turned out. Everything about the way it came to gather was totally wrong:  the colors, they lay out, the blah, de blah, de blah.

The process had value, however.  I realized that:  1:  I probably over-layered the texture of the piece; and 2: I should have quit while I was ahead:  I had previously pieced together this interesting green background; I found a jazzy leaf stencil and this seriously DIVINE new stencil paint and it created what would have been this ethereal, amazing background. 

But then… I cut it up, rearranged it, layered some library ephemera on top of it, added some lighter paint, and suddenly, it looked as if a grass-gluttoning cat had vomited all over the canvas; there was WAY more going on than I wanted. 

Lesson learned:  sometimes after the first two layers, you’re done.

BUT, the rest of what I put together with it, turned into this: 

Yep, the quote’s from Oprah.

It’s not as legible as I would like, and I wouldn’t say its a favorite.  However, it freed me up to begin something else...two other soul silhouettes:

(btw…If you follow the Black artist Kara Walker, you’ll know that she utilizes some seriously behind-kicking silhouettes in her artwork. Seriously, they are not for the weak. She’s amazing…and a fellow California girl.)

In each piece you create, there’s always a lesson. Sometimes the lesson is, “This isn’t working…but don’t discount the direction that you’ve taken and the cobwebs you may have shaken out.”  Go through this piece to find your direction to the next one.  And sometimes, less is more.