Acrylic painting on gallery wrapped canvas.

This piece started with a fleeting reflection on my living room wall. I sketched the reflection of a tree branch onto the canvas and it grew into a suggestion of a whole universe found within a small piece of beauty. The gentle breeze moving a growing branch, casting a double shadow of life onto my terracotta coloured wall sparked excitement in me — a desire to grasp it and keep it for myself…to express it as precious as gold and with a depth that lasts forever in ones heart. I am stretching myself daily now. I re-imagine. I remember. I create. This piece expresses my personal growth: Happiness was something beautiful but vague to me most of my life…there was only a shadow of it, without the burst of visceral reality. Painting it helped to give my joy a voice. Now I am able to grasp and fully celebrate it. Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. Eleanor Roosevelt. And Thomas Merton wrote" Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.