Love
Sometimes a painting becomes something entirely different when you stop trying to
decide where it should go.
8 September 2026
This painting began as an experiment in color and texture.
Layers of pink, turquoise, purple, yellow and green accumulated across the canvas through scraping, sponging and glazing. For a while, I saw something recognizable beginning to emerge. The pale marks looked like sailboats scattered across water, almost as if I were looking down on the San Francisco Bay through clouds and whitecaps.
That interpretation felt especially meaningful to me. I grew up sailing on the Bay with my father and grandfather, and although it has been many years since I’ve been on a sailboat, those memories are still very much a part of me.
I considered following that path. I even imagined adding the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance and allowing the abstract marks to become a hazy memory of the Bay.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I covered much of the color with transparent Payne’s Grey and Ultramarine.
Into the darkened surface, I scratched words: life, depression, joy, sad, help, freedom.
Then I took a hard-bristled brush and scratched across the entire canvas, almost like erasing an Etch A Sketch. The words disappeared into the marks. The brighter painting underneath became fragmented and obscured, although pieces of it continued to show through.
I wasn’t working toward a composition anymore. I wasn’t really thinking about whether I was making a “good” painting. I was simply responding to it.
Then I looked at a cup of red glaze sitting beside me.
Almost without thinking, I picked it up and began drizzling a single word across the canvas in cursive:
love.
And that was where the painting eventually stopped.
I didn’t immediately know whether I liked it. It felt strange, raw, maybe even a little silly. So I hung it on the wall and left it alone.
Over the next several days, I realized I didn’t want to change it.
The colors I originally loved are still there, but mostly buried. The words I carved into the surface are still there too, even though they can no longer be read. The heavy and the light exist together underneath all those scratches.
And across all of it is one word that remains visible.
Love.
Maybe this painting was simply something I needed to make. Maybe it was less about creating an image and more about allowing the process to become whatever it needed to become.
Either way, I think it’s finished.
And perhaps that’s enough.
Love 22 × 27 cm