Noticing Shadows

I started seeing shadows three years ago.

Specifically, the shadows of trees and shrubs, movement and light, rustling. I noticed them everywhere and took photos and wondered about what they were trying to tell me. 

A sketchbook page from spring of 2021

In the back of my mind I knew they would be woven into my creative practice but I wasn't sure how until last year. The idea dropped into my head in Mexico and slowly simmered away in my brain and in notes sprinkled into notebooks while I waded through months away from making art.

A suddenly inspired sketch created in a dark hotel room while the baby napped. Neocolor II blended with a q-tip on hotel paper, 2023.

The idea is still changing and morphing, like the shadows themselves. When I start a painting I'm never exactly sure which direction it's going to take. Will it be deeply layered, complex, mysterious, will it be soft, serene, simple? The painting and I decide as we go. Some of them end up more literal while others take on other forms though the process of layering, morphing from shadows to the plants trees themselves, some fall somewhere in the middle. 

It's taken a lot of time in and out of the studio to start to understand those shadows, three years later. Why are they so intriguing? It's more than their beauty. It's the way they move, shift, rustle.

Shadows, though themselves dark, are evidence of light. Shadows of plants are evidence of life. But none of it can be grasped. And none of it can be held. The leaves flutter, the sun moves along its predictable and ever-shifting path (okay, technically the earth is moving). Moment to moment they are never static. Nothing is. And that's the whole point. None of it stays, and we love anyway.