10 Year Anniversary: The Painting Diary 11 of 30
Painting Diary 11 of 30: Self Portrait With Bees, 2013
This painting was alive as I was painting it. Originally it was a pretty straight forward self portrait with some foliage around my face. As the painting progressed the foliage grew and closed in around my face, little by little until just my eyes were poking out, and then those too were swallowed by the thick brush. Some guardian bees showed up at the last minute and moved in.
When I sent this painting to my dad to get his feedback he had not seen any of the previous iterations of the painting and I didn’t tell him that it had once been a self portrait. He took one look at it and commented that it looked like a self portrait with bees! How did he know?! Must have been the hairdo.
Meanwhile, the tail end of 2013 was getting super weird in Marysville. I ended up basically squatting in my moms house after she walked away from her mortgage and moved out. It was a big house and nearly empty but I decided to stay for as long as I could. Free rent is free rent, right? The heater broke around the end of October and it was starting to get cold, and no one was paying for the utilities anyway.
I was facing a point of truth. I was homeless and jobless and running out of money. After two years I still didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I have to admit I was starting to sweat a little but I wasn’t that worried because I had experienced the result, in the last two years, of total faith in the path. I knew I was moving in the right direction and that everything would be fine, everything was just perfect, even if it didn’t always feel that way. Something big was coming, I knew it.
Randomly (or was it) I ran into an old coworker at a friends BBQ one afternoon and he was looking for someone to work with on an independent game. I had sworn not to return to that work but I was almost out of money at that point and working one on one with someone to design and create a game didn’t sound so bad. I said yes and with a paycheck on the horizon I decided it was time to get my own place again. Marysville was a dark spot on the map and it was time to flee while I still could…
Self Portrait With Bees, Oil on board, 2013