It’s been a while since I’ve written here.

Time does strange things when you’re in it, living through it, recovering, trying to hold joy like a wisp of smoke in the palm of your hand. Have you ever known this feeling?

This painting—yes, this one painting, took me a year. At times, that felt like a betrayal of who I once was. The woman who painted massive canvases with urgency and fire, with entire body gestures as if a conduit of energy coming through and bursting onto the canvas. The woman who used to finish a painting like this in a single breath.

I remember her. I miss her.

But this past year was something else. It hurt to paint. Physically. Emotionally. And yet, this painting became a portal, like an opening to joy. The kind of joy that arrives unexpectedly. A giggle. A smile that comes from somewhere just behind the pain. A moment of forgetting… and then remembering who I am.

And now here it is.

Breathing. Alive. Complete.

This painting exists because I showed up, one brushstroke after the next.

Sometimes, that’s all I had in me…and eventually it all adds up.

There’s something about this piece that moves me every time I see it. It feels both light yet grounded. It’s something you don’t just see, you feel it.

It’s uplifting.

You take pause.

The colours shifting with lightness of day, the quiet glow from within, begins to bloom as night falls.

I take pause, breathe it in.

I feel such joy. Palpable.

I close my eyes and smile knowing that when this painting is acquired, it will emanate the very things I felt while painting it. This is the greatest feeling to share my passion with you. Besides, this world needs more joy.

So I return to this blog not to announce a comeback, or to make promises, but simply to say:

I’m still here.

Still finding portals.

With love,

Pamela