Oh my gosh I am overflowing with emotion. I went for it. I’ve been sobbing because I went for it. My black dog, Taka, who so patiently listened to me singing Freedom a week ago, this time lay near me during the whole painting process. I worked on the floor. And when I was done and realized the enormity of my anguish for our earth, I burst into tears, and Taka was right there. I rolled over to be near him and he comforted me with pats and kisses and I graced him with my painty hands. He now sports a mixture of yellows, greens and whites on his sweet little head.

So here’s what happened. My curiosity took me INTO the tree I was hugging in the last painting. I wanted to know more about how the tree responds to being recognized by a human, experiencing my love. I knew I wanted to paint bigger so I hooked two pieces of paper together to make a 36 inch square approx. and decided I needed to kneel on the floor. I had the sense I was going to get physical in this one.

I started out thinking I was going to paint my ear, up close and personal, even googled some images of human ears so I knew what they looked like. Then I changed my mind.

I started laying in the trunk again with a broad brush, but the brush didn’t hold enough paint for my pleasure, so I actually drizzled paint right from the bottles onto the paper. I’m using poster paints – I love their silky texture. I stroked them with abandon to make the trunk and then felt moved to streak texture across them. Early on I used a brush. Later my fingernails, replicating the wind from the earlier image. Then to represent my human self, I needed to do hand prints. I did hand prints in two colors all over the left side of the painting and took some time to highlight their interesting shapes by painting blue all around them. Blue represented my dream that humans will awaken in time for us all to thrive on this wee globe.

But then, but then the painting asked for more hands, all the clambering hands of humanity, 7 billion of us soon to live here I learned a few days ago. Hands climbing all over that one poor willow, whose heart still beats strong, eager for humans to return to reverence for life. I started with white right hands and black left hands overlaying the first ones, but then the demand came, more, more, more hands of all the people who rape and pillage and destroy, who don’t realize they live on a sentient being whose stories might illuminate our own. I added yellow hands…then to bring in hope for the greening of our souls, I added green hands, and then I heard the statement. It’s not that easy. The forces of darkness need to be recognized in order to strengthen my resolve to contribute. So I squirted lots of black paint along the left side and then used my hands to push it in tracks obliterating the lovely blue and white patterns I had made earlier. If I hadn’t been in such a flow, I would have gotten my camera out because it would have been fun to see all the rapid changes to this painting.

The white slash to the left came by “accident”…I think I may need to follow it next!