Painting ‘Sun-Kissed’

“Half in shadow, half in light, you pause, and realize for the first time in months, you are glad to be alive.”

   I painted this scene nearly a year ago. The story of this painting is a long one, and a short one. To the casual observer, it’s a fairly straightforward scene. However, it is not without meaning or symbolism. There is usually a great deal of symbolism in my art, and this painting is no different. This is the story of this painting, and what it symbolized in my personal life at the time of its creation.

It was April, between winter and spring, when everything was brown, gray, and muddy. The inspiration for this piece came late Saturday night. It was the kind of inspiration that goes away the next day if not acted upon immediately, so I ran to the studio and picked out a canvas and colors. Usually, my painting process involves me getting very caught up in the details, but I wanted this piece to be soft and ethereal. I didn’t want many lines or sharp contrasts— just splashes of sunlight against shadow. I approached it from that perspective— a perspective of movement, of sunlight splashing over the canvas. I wanted even the brush strokes to look like a dash of sunlight.

I didn’t leave the house until it was finished on Monday morning. It was a wonderful weekend, one of those weekends where inspiration drove out loneliness and enthusiasm overrode my internal clock, so that on Monday morning, I was surprised the weekend had gone already.

The creation of this painting marked a shift in my life. I had spent the last two years in a dark fog of anxiety and deconstruction. I didn’t know who I was, and I was afraid that if I found out, I wouldn’t want to be her. I was afraid to stay the same, and afraid to change. It was dark, lonely, and terrifying. However, in the months before April, something changed. It was a subtle change at first, like the way the air shifts in spring to start melting the snow. I began to look forward to waking up the next morning. I looked forward to making breakfast alone in the dark, sipping my coffee, and watching the sun come up. I looked forward to doing simple, human things, things that make no difference at all, unless you enjoy living.

I started to discover things about myself. I enjoyed growing things—flowers, trees, vegetables. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to share my art with other people— strangers. I wanted a blog. I wanted a cat. I fell in love with life again, slowly, as if I had once loved it and forgotten how. I tried new things and contemplated new beliefs. It was like dipping my toes into a cold lake, little by little, and discovering it felt clean, invigorating, and refreshing.

All these micro-revelations came to me, one at a time, until they broke into my consciousness and created the inspiration for this painting. Like the painting, I was stepping from the shadows into the sunlight. I was glad to be alive again. The sun felt better than it ever had before, because I felt it knowing that I had come close to never feeling it again. And I was glad it was still there, waiting.