36x48 Phoenix, Arizona 

You never told me how you could write. To be fair I probably never asked you that specifically. You met me in a time when I didn’t know how to ask people about themselves.  I went through all of your blogs after googling “word blender” to come up with a concept for this painting. I am in awe of your talent. Of your ability to put words together so minimally with so much power. Not since I first discovered Bukowski (no offense but he was the first writer I ever read that could write with so few but very raw, real words to paint a picture) had I felt the kind of identification and comfort in reading poetry. I can’t believe I never knew this about you. I hope you publish your writing.  This world needs it. 

The poem “Mend” that you created portrayed to me the magic and often celestial moments within the pain of grounded physical and emotional self repair. The darkest dark, right when the lightest light of the end of the tunnel of pain appears. Just like the desert, your desert, your home. The darkest dark. The brightest light. That poem was the moment the light of healing appeared. The hope. The salvation. And in a flash, you’re not too sure what just happened. 

From the moment we met I always felt I could be completely, 100% myself. You felt like my sister immediately. I wanted you to forget going to burning man and just stay in my apartment for three weeks instead. You were Penelopes favorite visitor so far in life. She just slept on you for a full day, calm and flirty. To me that means an infinite warmth and old soul magic within your being. That is why the fluorite sphere chose you! 

With Mend (Illuminate) I wanted to make you a sparkle bomb. Something you could look at every single day and see the brightest, glitteriest light, hope, and salvation within, even though right now this world feels so fucked and dark. We have lost ourselves as children. Like in rainbow brite when all of the star stealers come and take all the color. It’s effortless to view everything with these dull, low-frequency lenses. This painting is the opposite of that. It’s all too much. But I know it is perfect for you. I’m sure we’ve both been told a lot in our lives that we are “too much” of any given thing. 

Your love and acceptance of me from day 1 provided me with the ability to create something specifically for you that is child-like, too fucking glittery, too gaudy, and completely beautiful and perfect in its wholeness. The line in your poem “A rainbow bubble. Swims swimming” struck me. The magic and fragility of a bubble and a rainbow. Never beginning to really ending, but usually gone before you know what you've seen. Being a kid was probably really hard, but I hope every time you catch a sparkle in this canvas you know that that kid is still in there and a word genius. 

I added “Illuminate” to the title because every day my mantra is “illuminate my mind, illuminate my life” and it has changed everything about my perception and well-being from the inside out. I hope within this canvas you can feel the love, the illumination, and the sparkle that has been created to radiate out for you to be with and feel, just as your words and poems have brought me so much comfort and identification.