There is a moment after finishing a painting when my heart sits as empty as the easel. It’s not like I haven’t done it before, but I seem to have to learn the lesson again and again. 

And it’s not an abandoning. I will still have a relationship with the painting finished. It will just be a new connection. No longer of the “going through,” but the “how far we’ve come.” A new beauty stirs inside and shifts the ending to a beginning. 

I was so nervous, my first job after college. Caught in the ending of school and the beginning of work, I really had no idea which way to move. It was Ron Miller, over the intercom, that set me free. When a situation arose in his department, he always used the intercom to call for help. He never referred to it as a problem. Loud and clear, he summoned aid by saying, “We’ve got an opportunity!” 

Ron Miller passed on this year. As it turns out, he lives on through my apron in the south of France. Hanging on my empty easel, I hear him calling, “We’ve got an opportunity.” And so it begins.