My new painting, “Effervescent,” pays tribute to this.

I love being in the water. I love being held in its embrace with all its caresses, its bubbles, its currents. Perhaps this has been the driving force that commands me to keep painting the human form in water. Water restores me as readily as walking barefoot in an expanse of luxurious grass. Both are a return to the earth and water elements from which we all arose.

I often don’t know why I have chosen a subject until I’ve finished a painting and then, stepped back.

It’s definitely not an intellectual thing. I only employ my brain power when it comes to engineering how to make it happen (thanks, Dad!). No, if I don’t feel that tug in my solar plexus when I’m combing through the enormous vault of inspiration photos I’ve taken, it’s a no-go. I follow my heart, the tuggings of my soul. And as I do, I learn more and more about myself.

This is why losing myself in painting these watery worlds is so freeing. I’m bypassing linear and narrow left-brain thinking and I’m swimming in the ocean of possibilities in the creative hemisphere, my right brain.

So, why “Effervescent?”

Maybe it was a longing to feeling that brightening effect of being in the sea or the ocean (especially now that weather and temps are making that seasonally prohibitive). Why not use my creative skills to “go there” in my imagination?

A quote from my favorites mystic comes to mind:

“In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans.”
— Kahlil Gibran

Never has a subject so put its hooks in me like water has.

Frankly, when one or two water paintings became three, four, five…and now seventeen, I realized that a greater force was at work, one that is telling me, “You’re far from finished, so keep going!”

Why not when painting water restores my soul in increasingly profound ways?

And “going” I am. I’m currently about two thirds through #18, which has a very different sense of scale. The only hint I’ll give is that “surrender” is the emerging theme.

So, stay tuned. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy “Effervescent” and the other paintings in my Water Series!