The Painting That Waited Two Years
“Even Flowers Have Their Secrets”
This painting sat in my studio for over two years, halfway finished..
Not because I didn't know how to finish it. I mean, I could easily have completed every flower, blended every color, filled every space, and created a beautiful, typical, floral painting. The kind people would immediately understand.
But every time I picked up a brush, something stopped me.
The painting felt incomplete because the story was incomplete. Her story, and mine. These past two years have been fairly brutal for our family, in many ways. And also, glorious.
Life isn't made of fully colored-in flowers.
It's made of joy and grief. Growth and uncertainty. Beauty and disappointment. Vibrant seasons and colorless ones. We carry all of it at the same time.
So eventually I stopped trying to make the painting prettier.
Instead, I made it truer.
I made some flowers black and white. I allowed drips to run down the canvas. I left spaces unfinished. I let contrast exist where I once wanted harmony.
And that's when the painting finally came alive.
The black-and-white blooms don't represent something missing. They represent the parts of our lives that are still becoming. The drips remind me that nothing stays perfectly contained. The empty spaces remind me that not every question needs an answer.
For two years I thought I was struggling to finish a painting.
Maybe the painting was simply waiting for me to understand that beauty doesn't come from perfection.
It comes from allowing the whole story to exist.
Even the unfinished parts.
Especially the unfinished parts.
~Much love, as we continue to embrace the beautiful mess of life,
Jen
Here’s the transition rom the initial inspiration of freshly-picked Zinnias from the garden, to how she sat for over two years, to her final, brilliant creation, dripping with truth!
