“Well, Hello There” 6×6, oil on gessoboard, $75.00 [button link=”http://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/denise-hopkins/well-hello-there/228332″ type=”big”] Buy Now[/button] SOLD

Today was an interesting day in the studio.  Worked on a painting I’d started a week ago, abandoned it.  Started a new painting.  Smeared it away twice.

Then I remembered the trip we took last month to the Tampa area and all the (unintentionally) blurry, unfocused pictures of pelicans I took while we were there.  We means two toddlers and two adults on an eleven-hour road trip.

I met my friend Ann on a retreat for the “separated, widowed, divorced”/sad people.  We were pretty significantly the youngest in the bunch.  I hadn’t been living back in my hometown long, and she became my first friend in a place I’d never thought I’d make my home as an adult.

I am repeatedly amazed at the people who seem to enter my life at exactly the right moment.  She was one of them.

Which bring us to the epic adventure of two single moms and two toddlers in a car for a very long time and the chaos/fun/exhaustion that ensued.  Ezra’s face lit up when he sat in the surf for the first time, splashed by kicking his legs in imitation of  his “pretend big brother”.

I took pictures of pelicans on the trip because I thought I’d use them in paintings when I got home, but, until today, I haven’t much thought about them.  The photos are painfully poor in quality but today (which is rainy, grey, peaceful) I pulled them out.  The photo I used as a reference doesn’t have two pelicans, just one perched on a string of lights running along the dock.  I thought about writing something silly about the metaphorical nature of the image, but, let’s be honest, I just wanted to paint a pelican, and it just so happened to lend itself to a little trip down memory lane.

This painting started as one pelican:

I was so happy with the loose brushstrokes, the understated image, that I was nervous about adding the second one.  But compositionally (and perhaps metaphorically?) it needed another one.

Once again feeling grateful.  Feeling not so alone.