Stillness

Stillness is both a shield and a refuge - a retreat from your surroundings, from distraction and external influence - to find solitude for reflection.

During the creative resurgence that followed my refresh last year, I kept returning to the same image in my mind: a dark painting, and an equally dark bird. Something reminiscent of an old oil portrait that feels quiet and almost disappearing into itself. Why a bird? Whenever I start a painting from a place of emotion, the birds inspire me - they are my signs of peace.

I imagined the bird fading into the background, only visible by the way light caught its feathers, as if it were emerging from its surrounding. The palette needed to stay deep - nearly black - with hints of purple. I was inspired by the grackle, a bird that swarms my yard every year, they're striking creatures when the light hits just right. Their coloring changes from deep shades of purple, black and blue, almost like a camouflage.

Color is deeply tied to emotion. I think I was drawn to those darker shades because of where I was emotionally at the start of the year - feeling uncertain, and questioning whether I wanted to keep going with my art at all.

When I’m working through something personal, my instinct is often to pull inward. I want to disappear for a while to step away from noise, obligations, and expectations, and only reemerge when I’m ready. I give myself permission to work quietly, letting the idea take shape internally before it ever reaches the canvas. There’s no rush, no timeline. Just moving at the pace as it comes to me.

When the fever finally broke (a phrase I use for the moment when I’m no longer living inside a piece and can step back to see it), I understood what I had been working through.

The painting reflected my need for stillness. The bird nearly dissolving into the background mirrored my own desire to retreat, to remove myself from distraction and outside voices. To sit with uncertainty, rather than rush past it. To let light arrive in its own time.

This painting became the first piece in what would later become Luminous Wings - a body of work shaped by that inward turning. Each piece in the series holds a quiet moment along a broader journey toward finding inner peace.