HeartEyeLeaf (6)

Often, I start out with an idea that poses the problems of how do I render the image in my mind's eye, in what media, what size, what colors, what patterns. I make a decision about one dimension and start drawing, cutting, painting, and that acts as a constraint on possibilities for decisions in the next dimension. I'm not big on planning every detail in advance. I'm much more of a bricoleur. I started out knowing that I wanted something big that I would cut out of plywood and it would encompass heart, eye, leaf themes. But sometimes the painting just veers me somewhere I had not planned. In this case, I finished the eyes and the surrounding blue gradient and didn't know how far I wanted to take that deepest blue. And how will that interact with the green that I started on the outside? I decided to export the "how will it interact  with the outside greens" problem to the future and circumscribe the deep blue with something heart shaped. Then the heart shaped thing wanted a wiggly border. Then the painting suddenly veered into outer space, which was far from my mind when I started.