PAINT ALL THE THINGS!!!

 

Hi Everyone!

 

I've been a busy busy mural-painting beee! So much is happening between May and June that I'm feeling like I can barely keep up (while also incredibly grateful for the work...duh.) In Mural-landia, I've started to find that the wintertime, especially after the holidays, business is a little slow. Then Spring comes, and everyone starts to feel re-energized and excited about all things home-improvement. People start to add the color back into their lives! I've got a few business-place murals and a residential in the cue, and I'm super excited to paint all of them. Like, they're really really fun. But I'll tell you about those next time.

 

This post is gonna be way pic-heavy below, so get ready. Everything pictured here, and a few things that aren't, were finished during a recent 9 day trip to San Diego. I was there to paint murals inside a new memory care facility for patients with dementia and Alzheimer's. It's a super rewarding project to be a part of, and when I stop to reflect back on it, the warm and fuzzies start up. My grandma had dementia, and it was super hard to watch her decline. Up until the last couple years of her life, Grandma was an incredibly prolific and talented abstract artist. We were 2 peas in a pod - I thank her for the art-y brain I inherited. I also inherited her nice Golden acrylic paints, and a ton of her brushes. She wrote her name on them with sharpie, and I smile everytime I turn a brush in my hand and find her name there. When I reflect back on all the work I've done at not just that particular memory care facility, but the 2 others I've worked in, along with 2 retirement centers, I feel so happy and proud about being able to provide some joy and maybe ease some of the struggles of the residents who live in them. I know my Grandma would be so happy that I'm using this skill that she passed down to me, to help people who had what she had. Some strange full-circle-ness in the universe, that is.

 

BUT. Holy crap was it exhausting to paint this intensely under the kind of pressure and deadlines I was under for this last facility. Not to mention, trying to schedule and navigate around all the different kinds of workers that come through a construction site! I think I didn't blog about this whole thing until now, just because the whole post would have been like, "I'M. TIRED." Because I sure was. I guess, I've found that my "sweet spot", of getting my most quality mural work done, and staying in a creative zone, lasts about 5 hours. Then I need to eat (before the hangry-s kick in), and just rest my eyes. It really helps so much to do murals in big chunks rather than all in one day, working straight through. I think your brain needs time to catch up to what your hands are doing or something. It just feels like after I sleep between painting sessions, I solve the creative problems in the project overnight in my dreams. It really does work that way. BUT, deadlines are deadlines, and I didn't have that luxury this time. Still happy with what I made though, so maybe it's ok to paint exhausted and delirious. ;) Here's the stuff: