Quiet Excitement Painting

My recent work explores the soft, sustaining excitement of contentedness and genuine comfort that accompanies the times of life when everything is just fine. I find these lengths of existence to be among the most interesting for their seemingly “in-between” quality, yet in reality the majority of our life is spent not in the peaks or valleys, but somewhere in the middle. While they’re not marked by life-affirming memories, I hold these languid stretches so dear for the quiet warmth that accompanies simplicity. The Burnt Umber and Yellow Ochre used in this work was purchased at an estate sale I was exploring while visiting my family back home. This paint was old, and well loved by its previous owner, but I could tell by his annotations on the tubes that he was a hobby model maker during his “in-between” times. When things were calm in life, he found gentle elation in the exploration of a new passion. To some these activities read as mundane, but to this stranger and me they are the enveloping of comfort.