This past week and a bit has seen a huge burst of finishing pieces that I have been working on for awhile. It feels very freeing to have completed these pieces. It’s opening my up to what’s next. I honestly don’t know what that is, but I did know that I needed to finish what I had started, or decide that it wasn’t worth finishing, and move on.

Sometimes the finishing of a piece takes a long time. I stall in my progress, for many reasons. Sometimes I just don’t have the right information to continue. Sometimes I get sidetracked. Sometimes I have lost the thread of where something was going.

These two pieces, which are 12″ circle panels mounted on a spacer into a 16″ shadow box, are two examples of just not knowing what was next for them. They have been in a drawer for many months. Every once in awhile I would take them out, look them over and see if I could see the next step. For many months I have not been able to. Until this week.

This first one, Layers of Life, never seemed to tell me how to realize its completion. I would look at the base piece and just not see it. Then, in the past few days, I took it out again and I started to put the details in. The colours were all there, but none of the detail. Well, when I started, it just came to life and now I have to say that is one of my favourite pieces!

This second piece was a little of the same story. The base was there, but the details eluded me. I finished this one just after the US Election when I was really feeling the need for everyone to come together, hence, its name, We All Come Together.

Then there was the last little box … one of a series that I did … and again, it was the detail that brought it to life. I realize that I am stumped when I have large open areas to deal with, until I see how the detailing of them can work so well!

And this last piece is the heaviest table I’ve ever worked on … I call it “The Iron Leg Table”. Originally designed to be an outdoor table I think, someone replaced the glass top with wood. My perfect “canvas”. It is far more detailed then the photograph shows … metallic paints are so hard to capture without full studio lighting. It is now at the Salish Sea Market in Bowser for sale.

So, it’s been a busy few weeks of tidying up the bits and pieces and I feel really good about it all. Now I listen for the next easy step … hmmm … I wonder what it will be?

May the bits and pieces of your creative life offer you joy, always!

~sarah