Gratitude Practice 2020 Day 159: Painting workshop with Emily Fox King
I've been fangirl-ing Emily Fox King for years. She is a local Utah artist who teaches college classes, is growing a successful artistic business and busily moms a handful of young kiddos. She's got a terrific sense of color, a whimsical yet realistic approach to florals and is a very real very encouraging very chill yet very inspiring teacher. And today, I learned that bright hot fluorescent pink is her signature color which makes perfect sense after you follow her work for a bit. What's not to love?
Super grateful I signed up for a painting workshop and spent a social distance friendly sunny yet pleasant afternoon in a charming backyard painting with a lovely bunch of like minded strangers. Not only got to create some fun art but got to learn and laugh with Emily who made each step of the process both fun and very doable. Big big fan of meaningful facilitation and she is one of the best.
Grateful for color and pigment. When I'm really being honest, I strangely consider both to be dear dear friends. Grateful for the artistic combo of the intimidating yet inspiring blank canvas. Grateful for magenta...for burnt umber...and for aqua marine. Grateful for cadmium yellow...for violet...for cerulean..for warm white and of course for hot fluorescent neon pink. It's the squirty metal tubes and handy plastic containers. It's the mixing and the scraping and the merging and blending. It's the brushes and the knives and the paper and the dirty cleaning rags. It's the subtle combinations and the bright vibrant punchy pops of color and layer after layer after layer of color wheel goodness that bring nothing but joy and happiness. It's the bold beginnings, the experimental middles and the final content moment when you stand back, squint your eyes, tilt your head and call it good…. or more realistically good enough for today. It's both the mess and the magic...and I love it all.
Grateful for a few indulgent hours to unplug from my normal roles, routines and responsibilities for long enough to engage my artistic brain. Grateful for her guidance, keen ability to redirect and suggest and her expert finishing touch. This painting is an absolute joint effort and one I will treasure for years to come. Today confirmed I'm just not allocating enough time or energy to feed this growing creativity need...going to need to work on that.
And mostly today, nothing but gratitude for time to be creative...and flowers... because I'm always grateful for flowers.