Fear

These past few months I have been dealing with some circumstances in my life which have forced me to face things that bring fear, uncertainty, even panic.  In many ways I feel like the turtle that I painted this weekend.  We can often only see all of the things that potentially could go wrong, and favor shrinking into our shell, where we feel safe, unexposed, warm.  Yet, if we live inside of the shell all of the time, we miss the ability to move forward, even if slowly.  While I painted this, I kept thinking of a great quote that I heard the other day penned by Rudyard Kipling.  He said: "Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears."

Generally, I paint envelopes for others.  I guess this one was an envelope to self.

The other thing I learned while painting this is the fact that turtle legs look amazingly like two giant pine cones.

This is done entirely in Gouache.