Walk on Water II: I Didn’t Know I Was Making a Series

So often I sit down to write or to paint not because I’ve got some grand idea begging to be released into the
world, but because I have come to believe that even an uninspired mind will (eventually) attract an idea if only I
start moving my hands.

The painting that begins this post, almost another entire year later, continues this jagged little line of inspiration. I
am clearly still working out these ideas, imagining a faith that defies certain logic and, quite ridiculously, asks me
to keep going even when the ground ahead is not particularly well-formed. Perhaps even when the ground feels
too familiar, too much like the same old path I’ve already walked.

“Walk on Water II” is made mostly of isolated strokes of the palette knife. There are cracks between them that
reveal the pink wash that starts nearly all my paintings. In many ways, it is disjointed, which is often how I feel.
But when I take a step back, it comes together to form something more sturdy than my insecurities, something
more cohesive than my fears. And, like always, there’s a bird (at this point, how could there not be?), this time an
egret, leading the way.

The spirit often guides, but ours are the feet that have to touch the surface. Ours are the hands that have to
make the things. And maybe making them, even when the process itself is the only guaranteed reward, is sheer
eggshells-be-damned audacity.

Created years apart, I hardly even noticed these three paintings had become a mini series about faith (which is
always also about doubt), but it’s a surprise I’m now eager to make more intentional. The gallery I feel like I
opened just a week ago turns five next month, and to celebrate it, I’ve just begun a new collection of paintings
featuring water.

I’m not sure exactly what it will look like or even what I want it to look like. It’s been a long time since I’ve given
myself over to a cohesive series instead of making what feels small, comfortable, maybe even safe. I have my
doubts, and in them I have a little faith that I can move forward not despite those doubts, but with them.

I wonder if there are people out there with their daily planners, highlighters, and Post-it notes who start projects
with a clear vision, a gorgeous outline, their only task to bring it to life. Or do most of us, like me, fumble around a
while making messes until an idea catches, and then, if we’re lucky, another and another, until one day we look
back and see something was developing all along?

The woman in the painting can’t look back yet. She’s in the thing. She doesn’t know all the paintings that might
come after her, the ones she helped create—not because she knew where she was going, but because she just
kept going.