Peace, Love, Joy

love
Funny thing, all I wanted to do was make a piece that said "love" on it.  My original idea was to make it with a bunch of patchwork rectangles and then place the letters on top with a different material.  Then one day I was looking around a noticed a picture where someone had such bold dashing lines in their work.  The lines seemed to come alive and I began to ask myself . . . Why am I limiting myself?  Why do I keep myself within the orderly lines?  Why can't I have lines that move?

Right away, I knew my "love" piece was going in the wrong direction and so I trashed what I was working on and started over again.  This time I worked differently, letting my lines flow where they wanted to and choosing to just go with it.  When I was done, I had displayed it in a spot that I would walk by often to see how I felt about it.  I decided something was missing and added the words to the background.  What a difference that it made!

joy
I fell in love with "love" and the background really turned out completing the picture.  While I was working on "love" I was already thinking of doing another one with the word "joy."  With the "love" background in mind, it all came together and I just knew how I wanted "joy" to work out.  I wanted bright, cheerful, and uplifting - so I used my favorite combination of colors: blue and orange.  The words and form seeming to pop up from the bottom just felt like the right thing to do.

peace
I knew I wanted to make at least one more word, so I started throwing words out there.  When I came up with peace, I just felt like it was the right choice.  I wanted calming colors, so I went with blue and green, later picking the rose for some contrast.  Thinking of peace, "Silent Night" popped into my head and a star came to mind.  A star felt appropriate, but no matter how I tried to apply it in my thumbnail sketches nothing felt right.  I remembered what I did with the first two words and just went with it.  That's how I ended up with a sort of funky/wonky star.  The background was also hit and miss.  I ended up just playing around with different shapes until I came to the diamonds, which is when everything seemed to click together.

I love hearing about the the thought process that goes into other people's work, so I wanted to share my thought process on these.  I would love to hear any questions, comments, or suggestions. . . would you like to see more posts like this?