By nature, I guess I’m a bit of a worrier. Not that things are going to be bad necessarily, but I’m constantly thinking about the what if, the what next. I have found comfort in making. Making anything. When you’re creating something, you have to stay in the moment. If you are building a frame, you first have to find the wood. Then cut the wood. Then sand the wood. Then nail it together. Then sand the wood again. Then stain it. If you were to get ahead of yourself, stain it before you sand it for example, it wouldn’t work. And so I create, step by step. Patience. A virtue to be learned daily.

Painting is the same for me. Building the canvas. Then gessoing the canvas. Then beginning with the image. It takes a while to appear. Whether painting a person, or a pear, to give it life, it must have layers, depth, thought… time. Step by step. Stroke by stroke. Patience.

I have done both enough to know that it will work out, or should I say, that I will work until it does.

Yesterday I made a frame for my pear. A patient pear that deserved to be completed. I carry the lessons of this “still life” into today, and wish the same for my heart and mind — to be patient, to be still, and know that it will all work out as it should. And it will be beautiful.