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!

In joy,