Yesterday is history...

...tomorrow a mystery, today is a gift-
that's why it's called the present.

This 3' x 4' canvas was part of an order in which I was given free reign. The company liked my work- a member of staff had seen a couple of my canvasses at her friends & recommended me..... all I had to do was provide art-work that matched the colour scheme...what a dream job!

This one was to hang in the kitchen area which was neutrally decorated, so I decided to go for a 'cappuchino' look. I covered the background in a lovely dark brown gloss paint & once dry I set about swirling emulsion & acrylic to create a sort of frothy milky coffee effect. At some point I used some kitchen roll to blend it, but bits of paper fell off & got stuck in the paint as i rubbed- what a happy accident that was! They provided extra texture almost like the bubbles on top of he cappuchino. Obviously, if asked that was my intention!

I'm always uncomfortable painting 'things'- I tend to capture feelings, emotions, the sense of the words...energies. Although it started as a cup of coffee, as I moved paint about it became something more... the swirls became energies... a blending of strands from the Universe, something for the unknown people who would see it... a gift, just like the quotation.

Some of the splatters were done before the lettering & some afterwards to create layers & depth... I then touched up any letters that were too obliterated. I used a ruling pen for the loose italic, almost like handwriting. It's easy to adjust the points of a ruling pen to accommodate the consistency of different paints (diluted acrylic craft paint in this instance), or to create a finer/thicker line. A final splash- a dash of energy (or chocolate!)- with the brown gloss unified the whole piece & stopped it looking as if the light colours were just 'sat on top' of the background... job done!!

I had decided on the quotation beforehand- it took me quite a while to choose. Something meaningful but not too deep, but not pithy either. It's about living in the 'now'. It's easy to dwell on the past- to hang on to past hurts or hanker after bygone times, but we can't change it. It's gone. Done. Finished. Remembering & reminiscing is good, but letting the past interfere with our life now is not.
We can speculate about the future, and have dreams, plans, goals- all good things.... but spending too much thinking about them & not actually doing anything about them isn't so good. Much time can be wasted wishing time away wanting things to change without taking any action.

It is NOW that we live in, now that we can decide to do something, now that we can refuse to allow someone to carry on hurting us, now that we can share our precious gifts with others etc etc. We all know the theory, the time to put it into practice is NOW!