That Which You Desire is Within Reach

cut paper on wood
8 x 10″

I realize it’s coming up on the end of January already, but my brain is still stuck on the whole concept of the New Year, new beginnings, possibility. How we seem to spend so much of our lives clambering and climbing and stretching out our limbs for…it. That thing that is most desirable, most yearned for, most needed.

Usually holidays don’t have much effect on me, but this New Year has made me want to be optimistic. I started off with the idea of making this piece all about light and bright colors and happy happy joy joy. The wall I kept running into is that light doesn’t exist without darkness. I fought with that idea for awhile before giving in; and from that came the dark “curtains”. Once those are pushed aside, it’s just a short metaphorical climb to…it.

Somewhere along the line, this sort of fell into place as the last part of an unintentional triptych. The journey starts with the discovery of infinite possibilities. It continues with the realization of need and the searching to fill it. And it reaches its conclusion here. Maybe. I think. But you can never tell.

Here are two sketches from near the end of the thinking process, including the one I used. The rest were so different I may end up using them for another project down the line. Below that is the final drawing. You can see that the cloud was drawn on a separate piece of tracing paper. I can’t remember what I was thinking, but it was originally going to be a more complicated process and drawing. There were also going to be a few more clouds that got eliminated before the end.