Day 31. Riding Into the Unknown: Finishing 31 in 31 With Courage and Hope

I’ve never painted horses before, so if you’d told me a month ago that I’d paint them three times by the end of January, I would have laughed. And the day one bear? That wasn’t on my bingo card either.

Y’all know me. I’m a bird gal.
Hope is the thing with feathers.

But it turns out hope also has fur. And hair. And perhaps even scales… and who knows what else.

The horse and rider in this final painting didn’t appear out of nowhere. They surfaced earlier in the month in smaller studies—especially in yesterday’s High Horse, Good Grip, a piece built from leftover paint and trust.

I like the idea of riding boldly into the unknown.
I like the idea of making a stand—the kind that looks simple on the surface: painting what’s in you to paint, not just what you think might sell.

I like the idea of tapping into our shared humanity by creating in the midst of a chaotic world—one where people’s pockets are lined by the manufacturing of division and hatred, by binaries that say these people are worthy and those are not. As though any of us could be made of pure light or pure darkness. As though anything is that simple.

Manufacturing something else—something honest, something beautiful—feels like resistance.
It feels like power.

So on this final day, I listened to Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again as I made the last marks on this large painting. I scribbled lines into the surface with oil pastel—an idea that came from yesterday’s piece, which came from a month of doodling in a sketchbook I titled 31 in 31, 2026.

And I couldn’t resist.
I added the birds as guides for the journey.

As Mary Oliver writes in her poem about Franz Marc’s horses:

“Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful
is the piece of God that is inside each of us.”

When it was all said and done and I still had acrylic paint left on my palette, I did what anyone would do—I grabbed a fresh canvas and applied the remaining paint to it.

This 31-day practice is over.
But what it will inspire moving forward has just begun.

PS — Before I close this chapter, I want to say thank you.

Thank you to every member of this year’s 31 in 31 group. The work shared throughout the month was nothing short of outstanding. The poetry alone is worth joining for. Add in the music, the visual art, and the generosity of this community, and it becomes something truly special.

Whether you’re a novice or a professional, we’d love to have you ride with us in 2027. It’s never too late—and it’s also never too early.