The Road of Imagination
One canvas, countless transformations, and a simple question, “What if?”, led The Road of Imagination somewhere I never expected.
23 September 2026
Have you ever tried making something that just never felt quite right? For me, this painting is a living definition of that.
It started as a purplish feather against a pinkish background. It was okay, but it didn’t feel quite right.
My mantra with making art, and increasingly with life, has become “What if?” I like this mantra because it pushes me to make bold changes instead of living in fear of them.
So, what if I stopped trying to save the feather?
I took out my palette knife and began adding colored marks across the canvas until I felt a new direction emerging. Sometimes you have to seriously disrupt what you see in order to find something new.
This poor painting got disrupted multiple times.
It started as a feather, became a landscape of color, then transitioned into something resembling a purple alien world. Eventually, I began thinking about old, abandoned walls: layers of color, weather, damage and history, with traces of what had existed before still showing through. I darkened areas, added glazes and continued burying and revealing pieces of its past.
Then another “What if?” arrived.
What if something had begun growing across this abandoned wall?
I experimented with fluid art over the textured surface, allowing the paint to spread, form cells and create strange organic shapes. Suddenly, the painting seemed to have inhabitants.
Sea slugs, perhaps.
Tim sees a duck diving into water.
My son sees the ends of a scarf.
I sometimes see strange plant life growing across an alien world.
I’m still not entirely sure what it is.
And truth be told, I’m not entirely sure it’s finished.
But after having it on the wall for a few weeks, I no longer feel an immediate need to change it. From across the room, the large peach form still holds its own against the dark background. Up close, the cellular patterns, scratches, textures and remnants of earlier versions reveal just how much has happened to this canvas.
So I’ve decided to pause here and document the life this painting has had so far.
It may not be my strongest or prettiest painting, but it has become a favorite simply because of its sheer strength to endure.
It has helped me grow in patience, exploration and technique. It has allowed me to try things that worked, things that didn’t, and things that became something completely different from what I intended.
And through every transformation, it stayed with me like an old friend saying, “Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out together.”
For that, I am grateful.
My son named this piece The Road of Imagination, and I found myself really liking the title. After all of its transformations, this painting doesn’t settle into one story. It seems perfectly content to let each of us invent our own.
Perhaps that is its road: not one that is actually painted on the canvas, but an invitation to wander through it with an open imagination and discover whatever we happen to find along the way.
Maybe one day another “What if?” will come along and the painting will change again.
But for now, this is where we’ve landed, and I am content.
The Road of Imagination 33 × 24 cm