06/11/2026
"Joy Is Not A Crumb"
oil and acrylic on canvas
30x30"
🔴 SOLD
I've really been loving the combination of 'ghost images' overlaid on dreamy cloudscapes / landscapes lately... 🤩 There's a nostalgic, ephemeral quality to this ongoing series-- like old photo negatives dug out of an attic trunk mixed with day-dreaming.
I began this piece with a photo I took of a sunbeam radiating through the clouds, creating a prismatic rainbow. The underpainting had my signature neon brights, but also included a drippy, enigmatic wash of Prussian Blue. From there I began to paint the clouds, but somewhere along the way the energy of the brush and feeling of the colors took over... it became less about accurately representing the sky in the photo and more about capturing its joyful feeling and radiating light.
The process reminded me so much of that poem by Mary Oliver about not letting joy be a crumb... and so I didn't. I scraffitoed my memory of that line into the painting while it was still wet. The photo reference I used for the ghost image is one I took of myself right after I painted it, and I felt like it fully captured the immense energy of bursting joy in that moment. ✨️
