Bloom in adversity

If you’d been reading my posts prior to this, I’ve been posting the artworks I’ve made during lockdown. Some of them made sense to attach to my Quaranthinks series. I was not gonna stop creating, neither words nor paintings. What else can I do to be productive staying at home? February, I got a request from my sister to paint an acrylic picture with the dimensions 10 x 12 in for a spot in her home. I hadn’t been painting with acrylics for quite some time. But I made the painting in 5 days, adding 3 days to varnish it with acrylic polymer and to cure the painting. It’s not yet framed. I discovered I missed working with acrylics on canvas and made one more painting, same dimensions, but I didn’t have an inkling what it was for. I had a visual in my head of the upcoming summer when the flame trees would paint the skies in crimson and yellow by their blossoms. And in my mind I wanted an itty bitty little bird to be in the foreground of the blazing flame tree blossoms. I finished the painting in three days and varnished it. After finishing two canvas paintings, I was resting my entire right arm and since I had time once more, I was catching up with friends online. Among the people whom I spoke to was a friend who was telling me this really complex and profound story. On the second day, she continued telling me her story which totally blew my mind. And then she casually mentioned that I should submit something, an art piece for the Bloom 2021 Works women’s art online exhibit, which was gonna use the instagram platform since it’s not safe to be in art galleries yet. We very quickly chatted about topic. She just promised to send me the guidelines for it. I said I don’t know, I’d let her know. Since my flame tree painting is curing, I could see it vividly and then I realized it must’ve manifested to be in the exhibit. Maybe. I only had 3 days to create a decent description of it, my notes and a bit about myself. If it was meant to be, this would be my first time to exhibit my art publicly. And she said for me to submit two art works. I had to choose one from the gouache on paper art works I recently made. Because although I had two finished acrylic on canvas paintings curing, the other was owned by my sister already, no going back on that one. I had to create 3-5 MP photo files, set up the ring light to light up each artwork and took photos of the artworks. I sent them a day before the deadline, you never know if they might request a resizing of the file or whatnot. After four days they put my name with nine women artists on the IG post for the event. That was yesterday. Today, the exhibit’s happening. I guess, for a week it will be the giddiest, rarest week since lockdown for me and I was so excited for it to arrive. This is incredible, it’s an early birthday gift for me. I can’t stop painting and now it makes more sense to keep at it. It’s just a start, I’m a newbie to the art exhibit scene. I’m not taking anything for granted. Please go to Instagram and check our artworks while they’re there this March. While you’re on instagram, take a look at my Instagram valerianonnah.