Acrylic on canvas

8” x 10”

2018

You may be surprised to know that as a painter and color-lover, I do not love all colors equally. I’m (obviously) obsessed with blues and greens and I pretty much adore all the colors on the cool side of the color wheel. So, for this painting, I started entirely with my lesser favorites: hot pink and fluorescent orange. 

I really hated it. But, I had an idea recently to not only make warmer hues of blues and greens and grays to make these colors pop. I knew that my beloved blues and greens would sing even more brilliantly against the backdrop of their complimentary colors. Green sits across the color wheel from red, blue sits across from orange. A brand new approach to me that made my skin crawl for a minute has turned out to be one of my new little favorites thus far.

Inside of this, God has reminded me of something I may have forgotten a little bit in this season of life: it takes it ALL to make it even more beautiful. It takes a little bit (or a lot) of being uncomfortable and it takes a little fear and a little doubt (or a lot). Sometimes it takes a lot of risk and at least a teeny sliver of hope or faith (or maybe even none if you just can’t find it in the moment). Sometimes it takes the really ugly hard stuff and the stuff that breaks your heart and the stuff we’ve grown to hate in order for something much richer and more brilliant to be birthed. I guess we need the complimentary colors. I guess we still need the contrast. Okay, God.