Art Update!

I've been watching a lot of tutorial videos for painting recently and through all of my research and learning I came across a painting of a girl in a city that looked like this:

It was painted on some type of newspaper or book page and for some reason, the image really resonated with me. I could've stared at it for hours, and it made me feel really inspired. I wanted to paint something like it, but make it my own. My mother's birthday was coming up (it's this Monday actually) and I didn't have the money to purchase her a 'real' gift, but I happened to have just one canvas left, that was a pretty decent size, so I decided I would make this painting for my mother. I loved how the girl looked so independent and strong in the city. Her surroundings weren't overtaking or swallowing her, yet she wasn't the exact center of attention either. I was really excited to begin painting, and was feeling really inspired.

So I made this on my last canvas, with my mother in mind, to give it to her for her birthday. I call it "Sonder", which is a word which means "the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own".
The photo doesn't even hold a candle to what the painting looks like in person. There are so many layers of paint, so much texture on the canvas that really makes the piece unique. It took me about five and a half days of steady work to complete this painting, and it was my first piece done (almost) entirely with a palate knife (which was purchased for be by my loving and supportive boyfriend quite a while back). I would layer the paint, dry it with a hairdryer for a bit and then let it dry for several hours and repeat. I wanted the buildings to really stand out from the background, even though they were extremely similar in color. The background, girl, her umbrella, and the buildings were all done with the palate knife which was an excellent exercise in releasing control because it is nowhere near as easy to micromanage where the paint goes and how it interacts with the canvas as using a brush. For those of you who don't know, painting with a palate knife is very similar to how you would ice a cake. After completing my work with the knife, I painted the moon on with a natural sponge and then headed outside where I dipped a paintbrush first in white paint and then in water to splatter all of the raindrops on. Once that dried, I used a crayon to melt the wax. I broke the crayon in half and put it in a large spoon which I heated up with a hairdryer and then dripped it onto the canvas creating the drips that are coming off from the moon. Then when all of that dried, I used leftover automotive clear coat I had from when I fixed some peeling paint on my car a few years ago (because I can't afford proper clear coat at the moment) to cover the painting in effort to preserve it. Finally, when that dried, I signed the back and delivered it to my mother early as a birthday gift because I was way too excited to wait.
I've already heard several explanations about what people think this painting is about, including the popular statement that the moon is "crying", which I find extremely interesting. I'm hesitant to talk too much about what I was thinking when I was painting it because I wouldn't want to ruin anyone's own ideas, and I'm really excited that people are communicating with me what they think the painting is about, because this is my first piece so far that has sparked this kind of discourse. But, for anyone who is curious, I was listening to this song on repeat for a good majority of the time I was painting, and was kind of painting what that song felt like to me.

"So light your torch and follow me / We'll burn the boats back to who we used to be / and all this time it was never what it seemed"

To me it feels as if we all try to view our lives as if they're these epochs that will draw in the masses, but we're truly just dust in the wind, "burning the boats back to who we used to be", before we were born, before the world knew of us, and after the world would know of our existence. Before we had this view that we were more significant, yet there is a huge amount of significance in the insignificance. In the painting, nothing is really extremely clear, it's all sort of smudged and thickly painted on and difficult to make out, even the 'main character' of the painting, the individual in red is smudgy and up to interpretation. The painting for me, with the moon leaking down a quiet wisdom, is about a recycling of spirit or something.
I hope you all enjoy my painting and enjoyed reading about the process of me making it!

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