Working in Three's

Mother Earth

Dreams + Shadows

Four Directions

I have been working on this series of three paintings for several months now and though initially I was going to create one large vista, in the end I thought it would be nice to create three images that would work together like a triptych but would also work individually.  I like to think that this way I get to work in collaboration with the people who live with my paintings.

Often when I work on a larger scale (the three together measure 40x90 inches) I tend to paint several other pieces at the same time, both small and large including my current 52 WEEKS::Wildflowers series and Aa to Zz Gratitude.  This helps me to work through challenges and keeps my creativity flowing even when I feel blocked. 

The funny thing is that even though I completed the central panel first, it was the last to get a title.  The painting on the left, Mother Earth, was named the moment I returned from a day in the Rockies and immediately added forest and mountains to it; the one on the right kept me thinking of a medicine wheel with its four rings of colour and four swallows but I've already named a piece Medicine Wheel so this became Four Directions.  And finally, weeks after completing Dreams + Shadows, the title came to me while wandering through a book shop.  That often happens.