Surrender

Story Summary

Surrender was created while staying at a friend’s house during a time of transition and van-life building. The piece carries the energy of releasing timelines, expectations, and the need to hold everything together alone. As I painted, the process mirrored the invitation to soften and allow. This creation encourages you to surrender what you can’t control, embrace what is here now, and discover the joy and peace available on the other side of letting go.

Story

This work was started and completed while staying at a friends house in Flagstaff. I had three months in my new life of travel. During that time, I had several conversations with many people about how I was focused on “surrender.” Surrender was the word I used to represent the shift from my old life with a high-rise condo and Audi S4 to living a life of travel, in a van. I was asked if I painted a work called surrender, and I hadn’t. I said the next time I painted, I would create the work “surrender.” This work was created on a Sunday when I was spending many free moments to build out the van. I experienced a level of “frustration” in the van build out project. Everything was taking much longer than I thought. I was “behind” in how far I thought I should be in working on it. I was also very sore from all of the work climbing in and out of the van and squatting up and down as I installed the sound proofing which took me over 12 hours. It wasn’t hard work, just tedious. I was installing the sound proofing which would be covered up by the flooring so no one would see all the work I was doing. The results wouldn’t be seen...they would be heard. I had to blast the radio while driving to drown out the loud noises in the back and after putting the floor back in, I was able to cut the volume in half. The progress was beginning. I still had SOO much to do in the van and I decided a good exercise would be to paint “Surrender.” I decided even though I was sore and “behind” in how far I wanted to be in the buildout, and the time I would use to paint would take even more time away from the van build, I knew this was important to paint…”I missed painting.” After mocking up “Surrender” I choose a more vibrant paint palette and used more defined harsher strokes so I could let go of some of the frustrations as I worked to continue to stay on the “surrender” path. It was very excited to paint again and really step into “surrender” in the process. Surrender and Enjoy!

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