Lately I’ve Been…Painting

Lately, I’ve been painting.

Not because I decided I needed to become more productive with my hobbies. Not because I set myself a challenge to complete a certain number of paintings. And certainly not because every painting needs to become something useful.

I’ve simply been reaching for my watercolors more often.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that painting has become a quiet record of how I’ve been feeling. I don’t always sit down knowing what I want to paint. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m feeling.

I just know that I want paper, water and a brush in my hand.

And apparently, my emotions know what to do from there.

Sometimes, I Just Want to Play

One day, I painted strawberries.

There wasn’t some grand artistic concept behind them. I put blobs of paint onto the paper and let the blobs decide what kind of strawberries they wanted to become.

Some were plump. Some were wonky. Some looked like they had absolutely no intention of conforming to proper strawberry geometry.

I loved them.

Another day, I was feeling equally playful and dreamy, so I started dabbing different colors onto the paper. No rigid plan. Just little patches of blue, pink, yellow and green slowly becoming flowers in a blue vase.

“Unscripted Bloom”

Those are some of my favorite painting sessions: the ones where curiosity gets to drive.

What happens if I put this here?

What if I use this brush?

What if I don’t try to make it perfect at all?

Sometimes that’s enough.

Sometimes, Someone Dares Me

Then there are paintings that happen because somebody says something along the lines of, Let me see you paint this.

A friend once showed me a photograph of bitter gourd leaves and challenged me to paint them.

So I did.

Because apparently this is also part of my personality now. 😂

There was something delightful about figuring it out. The shapes of the leaves. The different greens. The curling tendrils.

It wasn’t about creating an important painting.

It was simply, Can I do this?

Let’s find out.

Sometimes, I Paint Because I’m Tired

“She Blooms Anyway”

She Blooms Anyway came at the end of a long day.

I was tired, but I still wanted to do something creative.

I found an old watercolor palette I’d bought cheaply on Shopee years ago. I’d actually decided to donate it. Before letting it go, though, I thought I’d give it one final whirl.

And out came roses.

Pink roses, naturally, because this palette contains what appears to be seventeen thousand varieties of pink that somehow have different names while looking suspiciously related. 😆

I was supposed to give the palette away.

I’m keeping it.

There is something wonderfully appropriate about an almost-discarded palette producing a painting called She Blooms Anyway.

Sometimes we’re tired. Sometimes we’re working with whatever happens to be left in the drawer. Sometimes we aren’t operating with our fanciest tools or under ideal circumstances.

And still, something blooms.

Sometimes, I Want to Learn

The lilies began differently.

I simply wanted to know how to paint lilies.

So I watched a tutorial and tried.

I studied the petals, the markings and the way the leaves moved around the flowers. I painted one version and then another.

Painting doesn’t always need to carry some enormous emotional meaning. Sometimes learning something new is reason enough to sit at the table.

And then, strangely enough, those lilies eventually became something else entirely.

Sometimes, I Rage Paint

There was a day when anger arrived seemingly out of nowhere.

I felt so full of it that my heart could burst.

So I painted.

I started painting a field of lilies, experimenting with a dagger brush because I wanted to see whether I could create the flowers with an angled brush.

I couldn’t get what I wanted from it.

Fine.

Back to my round brushes.

And I kept painting.

Stroke after stroke. Flower after flower. Leaf after leaf.

I wasn’t trying to create a profound representation of anger.

I just needed somewhere for the feeling to go.

The paper could have it.

That may be one of the things I love most about painting now. I don’t necessarily have to understand a feeling before I can do something with it.

Sometimes words come later.

Sometimes they don’t need to come at all.

Sometimes, I Begin Without Knowing Where I’m Going

One Sunday morning, my pretty little metallic watercolor palettes were sitting there, still individually wrapped in their plastic boxes.

I had been saving them.

For what, exactly?

Apparently I’d had enough of waiting because I looked at them and declared:

I shall use you today!

I unwrapped them, arranged the tiny palettes in my tray, gathered my new brushes alongside my old faithful ones and began.

There’s something delicious about that first use of new art supplies. The pristine pans finally getting wet. The first marks appearing on a clean page. All those possible paintings sitting inside little squares of pigment.

Later, while trying to decide what I could paint for a client who had requested planners, I needed a warm-up.

So I painted whatever came to me.

Palm trees against a loose sunset sky. Metallic pigments catching the light among washes of pink, gold and blue.

I called it Where the Day Melts.

It wasn’t supposed to be the painting.

It was me loosening my hands and letting my brain wander before doing the real work.

Then my client liked it too.

Of course she did. 😂

Immediately afterward, I painted Where the Sky Whispers: a wide green field beneath a multicolored sky.

That one feels different to me.

It feels like an exhale.

I love painting trees and plants. I love gradient skies that aren’t particularly interested in limiting themselves to one color. There is something about watching one wash wander into another that makes me want to soften with it.

And Sometimes, I Paint What I Cannot Say

Then there is What the Night Keeps.

This one takes me somewhere else.

While painting it, I found myself remembering two old lines of merchandise I created: Letters from Kyoto and Love, Ink, and Sakura.

Those worlds were darker.

Heartbreak.

A lover leaving at midnight.

A woman writing letters she never sends.

Rain outside while she cries somewhere no one can see her.

That feeling found its way into this painting.

Dark branches stretch across a blue-gray night while tiny pale blossoms gather against them. It doesn’t feel loudly sad to me.

It feels private.

Like something the night witnessed and agreed not to tell.

Perhaps that’s why I called it What the Night Keeps.

And perhaps that’s what painting has quietly become for me.

A keeper.

Not only of sadness or anger, but of playfulness, curiosity, exhaustion, tenderness, experiments, silly challenges and Sunday mornings when I unwrap beautiful new paints simply because I’ve decided that today is finally the day.

I Don’t Always Need to Name What I’m Feeling

I’ve spent enough of my life thinking.

Painting gives me another language.

I don’t need to arrive at the paper with an explanation.

I don’t have to make something beautiful.

I don’t even have to finish.

I can make strawberries from blobs. Paint bitter gourd because someone dared me. Rescue a cheap old palette from the donation pile. Learn lilies from a tutorial. Rage-paint an entire field. Open the pretty little paints I’ve been saving. Paint a sunset because I don’t know what else to paint.

The page doesn’t ask me to justify any of it.

It simply takes the water, the pigment and whatever I happen to bring with me that day.

And lately, I’ve been bringing quite a lot.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been painting so much.

Some feelings want to be understood.

Others just want somewhere to go. 🎨

—-

With elegance and quiet fire,
Lady E

Founder, Glow by Lady E 
An editorial space for stories, art, and intentional living