still in progress...but coming along...

As usual, I have no idea where these photos will wind up in the post....
these are details from the current project. Right now it may be called "I smell lilacs," or "Birds at night," or both... layering.

I get caught up sometimes in worrying about what I can't see yet. How will the bottom of this composition resolve itself? How will I finish the back and borders? Will I add trees? Where will it end? This one has been in the pipeline A WHILE... I have given myself the deadline of July 27th, the SAQA meeting, to have it completed. Because I like to spin these projects out past their useful span... I love them, then leave them, then renew my obsession months later. When I finally allowed myself a break from worrying about missing pieces, and started layering in some of the objects I've hoarded away (like a bower bird, but not as monochrome in my tastes)... well then. Things begin to bloom.

I have a friend who walks each night before bedtime. Sometimes he emails me his thoughts while walking, BlackBerry-style; and one night, while lamenting the increasingly-likely demise of a suffering acquaintance, he paused to type "I smell lilacs." It was early spring. And I thought, of night, and death, and flowers blooming in the dark; this is layered across the earlier mental image of birds on their branches at night, birds quiet, sleeping birds, silhouetted in their secret nests. The colors visible in bright moonlight, and the things you can sense, but not see...