Gathering up Little Moments

With my school-aged kids, this stretch of the year always feels strangely compressed. Dance recitals, end-of-

year events, birthdays, and school activities all seem to stack on top of each other in the calendar. The days start feeling very full in every direction.

But still, art continues quietly threading itself through the middle of it.

Definitely not through long uninterrupted studio days or large finished canvases, but through sketchbooks left open on tables or quick flower studies between errands. It's pulling over to take reference photos on the drive home after a paint night because the sky suddenly shifted into something impossible not to notice.

I’ve been thinking lately about how much of painting actually happens long before the final canvas. The noticing is part of the painting too. Paying attention to atmosphere, watching how light changes throughout the day, and storing away colors, edges, weather, and fleeting moments. Those little treasures eventually find their way back into larger paintings later.

During especially busy seasons, that way of seeing becomes its own kind of anchor.

Even when there isn’t time for a large painting session, there is still something grounding about noticing and paying attention. There is time to make a quick sketch, collect a reference photo, or store away a moment before it disappears again. I think that’s part of why art still feels steady to me during seasons that otherwise feel very full. Not because it makes the days quieter, but because artful thinking changes the way I move through them.

This season has felt especially crowded lately, but there are still paint-covered tables in the evenings, sketchbooks slowly filling, and children bringing dandelions into the studio while I’m trying to work.

Paintings continue forming themselves in small fragments long before the larger canvases are finally painted.

I’m looking forward to slower days, but in the meantime, I’m gathering up all the fragments and keeping them.

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