This painting is part of the Wings and Water series, where I’m thinking about movement repetition of struggles. The title refers to the way birds (and people) often catch little waves of momentum—not once, but again and again—as part of how we keep going in life.
In this piece, I was thinking about how clouds, like oceans, are bodies of water shaped by invisible forces. They drift, gather, shift. They hold potential and softness and storm. The sky, like the sea, has its own currents. I’ve watched birds near canyons loop and dive, seemingly for the sheer joy of riding thermals. It’s not always graceful. They get tumbled around. But they do it over and over. That energy is in here.
There’s a cluster of golden-winged birds cutting through soft pastel layers, flying through streaks of sky and fragments of paper. Some of the forms in this piece come from old journal pages and pretty paper purchased on trips. You can find some sheet music in there too because birds sing! Other birds were built up through paint, then scraped back or layered over again. This is a process that mimics the back-and-forth of effort and rest, needed to keep going in these times.
Bits of oceanic blue and foam-white drip downward, suggesting both rain and wave, gravity and lift. The repeated patterns and textured layering are meant to feel a little like riding out a current—not always smooth, but determined.
Like many of the works in this series, this painting holds both tension and release. A sense of pushing forward, tumbling back, and catching the next wave when it comes.
