1 Summer = 1 Painting

How it took me three months to make one small painting:

1. Get very excited about FINALLY painting that bug eaten poplar leaf I’ve been saving. It’s TIME.
2. Immediately change medication dosage.
3. Attempt to locate the poplar leaf I’ve been very carefully moving from place to place for five years.
4. Fail.
5. Destroy art storage spaces in a fit of organizational havoc.
6. Still fail.
7. Get overwhelmed by resulting disaster. Shove everything unceremoniously back into cabinets with zero rhyme or reason. Future me will be unimpressed.
8. Follow a memory to photos taken with the (then) new microscope.
9. Find ONE, very out of focus, extremely blurry photo of part of the poplar leaf.
10. Decide to make a different kind of painting with said photo in honor of the poplar leaf that has now resulted in three weeks of tears.
11. Purchase the paint that annoys me, instead of the paint I prefer, because it was on sale and this seemed to make sense when staring at the store display.
12. Proceed to compound the problem with using the cheapest brushes ever, both of which have seen better days. Refuse to switch brushes with the determination of a complete lack of executive function.
13. Fail to determine if want it to look more like a spider web, dragonfly wings, or stained glass. Change mind at random intervals, making it necessary to redo sections continually. Start each painting day with NO IDEA what I was thinking last time. Redo sections or give up and cry as feels appropriate.
14. Occasionally decide life is too hard and put self to bed for the night at 10:30 in the morning.
15. Possibly more than occasionally.
16. Blame all difficulties on everyone else in my house.
17. Change medication dosage.
18. Suddenly be able to think entire thoughts without crying.
19. Look at current mess of a painting with NO IDEA what I was thinking all summer.
20. Redo and complete painting in very little time with very little difficulty.

This is what brain fog looks like in my house. How about you?

This painting is a reminder that sometimes brains don’t brain. But I think it came out kinda fun, now that mine is back online.