For all you touch you cannot keep

Thank you so much for all the sweet birthday wishes! I celebrated it by painting all day Monday, and finished my painting! I named it "for all you touch you cannot keep", after a favorite poem of mine from Rod McKuen. Because for me, right from the start, this painting was about loss.

As with all of my more intuitive paintings, I had no idea what images would emerge, but I had the need to start a new painting and pour all of my feelings onto the canvas.

Now that I've finished it, I feel that this painting is about loss and the different ways people deal with it. Some look up, trying to find a piece of that what's lost, trying to find a ray of light, others live in denial, or close themselves off from the outside world, want to be left alone, still others fall down, maybe for a long time, maybe forever.

However way we deal with it, it hurts, for everybody. There's so much sadness in the world. But it's also important to keep seeing the good, to appreciate what's left, to keep going even if you don't want to. And especially: to be compassionate to others. Show understanding, show patience, be there for them, even if they push you away.

I have to warn you that this is a very long picture-heavy post. If you only want to see the finished painting, just scroll down to the end. If not, here's the in-progress journey from start to finish:

leftover paint from other projects. I always have a canvas laying nearby to clean up my brushes and my palette.

I decided to do some collage. First time I tried this on a painting, and now I know I should've waited until I had some more layers, because there's no sign of it anymore in the finished piece ....

Some spray-ink, and the leftover paints from my Summer of Color paintings (all colours are on there, except sage, sepia and grey ...)

Okay, the groundwork is done, now it's time for some serious scribbling and dripping

Love the strong pigment-rich colours of Golden paint

working in some images and shapes, all very random, no idea yet which side would be up.

My new Golden paints had arrived, and naturally I had to try them out on my canvas ;-)

Painting some more random marks, starting to bring out some images

can't get enough of dripping my new sparkling colours ....

Looking for figures and finding them everywhere. I also see a big fish, try to ignore it but it keeps coming up so I just go with it ...

Bringing out the images, wondering how many more I'll put on there

Painting the faces, trying to bring the fish a bit more to the background

Too dark for my liking, so here we go with the dripping again :-)

Painting the other faces, decided to ignore the face peeping over her shoulder (can you see it?), but brought in a small figure falling down.

Well, yes, of course, the bird had been waiting there patiently all the time, so I had to bring it to life .... I also felt it needed roughening up a bit, didn't want the figures and faces to be too smooth. Don't know why. Maybe something to do with grief, and the way it scars all of us ....

 Lightening everything up again and bringing in circles, the symbol for infinity and how life goes on. For me it's also a symbol of lost loved ones going up to heaven. We search for them but can't touch them anymore, they're out of our reach. Also added another little bird ☺

And this is the finished painting (finally!). I decided to also add some bubbles, another symbol for fragility and how we cannot keep what we touch.

This is to show the texture on the painting. I love how each layer adds something to the endresult.

Phew, are you still with me? Then I'd also like to show you the present I received from Sharon. She had a give-away during the Summer of Colour, and I was one of the winners. I won 2 postcards, but she ended up sending me also a cute little folder to put the postcards in. Lovely surprise, and Sharon, thank you so much!

These are the 2 cards I won. Love the colourful quirky characters ☺

This is the outside of the folder that the cards came in

and the inside. I love the loose colourful way of painting, and the uplifting quotes.

Well, I bettter finish here! Linking this as always to Paint Party Friday, lots more to see over there on their blog!

Thanks so much for visiting! Hope you're having a wonderful day, and a weekend full of fun, sun and warmth! ♥ ♥ ♥