Bird On A Wire
Sometimes the best thing you can do for a painting is give yourself permission to paint over it.
14 July 2026
I completed an earlier version of this painting in April 2025. It hung on my wall for over a year before I finally decided to paint over it. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. Deep down, I felt there was an even stronger painting waiting to emerge.
When I took it down, I’ll admit I was feeling a little grumpy. Painting has become one of my favorite ways to work through those moods, and I often find myself choosing colors that match how I’m feeling. That day, the canvas became completely black.
There is something strangely beautiful about an all-black canvas. It feels like a clean slate. An invitation to begin again.
I started by pouring fluid gold down the surface, watching it follow the ridges and textures left behind from earlier layers. Next came a glittery green apple color that I thought would complement the gold beautifully. Before long, my trusted palette knife was in hand, scraping, blending, and slowly transforming the canvas into something entirely new.
As the painting evolved, it began to remind me of the caverns I had visited just a few months earlier. This is actually the second painting I’ve created that feels cave-like, so clearly those underground landscapes left quite an impression on me. I sat with the painting for a day, but it kept whispering that it wasn’t finished yet.
The next time I returned to it, I was in a much happier mood. Out came the pinks, lavenders, and greens, giving the painting a much lighter, almost spring-like feeling. Once again, I stopped and let it hang for another day.
Then came my newest experiment.
My sister had given me a Gelli plate for my birthday, and after watching several tutorials I was excited to try image transfers for the first time. Long story short… it was a complete disaster. 🤣 Instead of the effect I was hoping for, I ended up stamping large black areas across my beautiful pink painting.
Oddly enough, that “failure” turned out to be exactly what the painting needed.
Rather than trying to fix it, I embraced it. I brought back some of the lavender and turquoise from the original painting and began scraping through the many layers, revealing little glimpses of pink, green, gold, and black that had accumulated throughout the painting’s long history. Every layer contributed something to the final result.
I love where this painting finally landed. More importantly, I love what it taught me.
Over the past year, I’ve slowly learned not to fear mistakes on the canvas. Painting over a piece isn’t erasing it. Every layer adds texture, depth, and history. Sometimes what feels like a mistake becomes the very thing that helps a painting find its voice.
I titled this one Bird On A Wire.
While scraping back one of the layers, I noticed a tiny shape peeking through that looked like a little bird perched on a wire. It made me smile, and just like that, the painting had its name.
Bird On A Wire 30.5 × 22.5 cm