I almost stopped so many times.
That’s what made this session different.
Y’all know that I’m always experimental. I never walk into the studio knowing my palette or my outcome—that’s simply how I work. Usually, instinct takes over at some point. Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour, and something in me says, “there it is.”
I step back.
Today that moment never came.
I kept adding. Watercolor drips first, then acrylic inks, then sprays. I wrote. Then more inks. More watercolor. Acrylic paint. I scraped and scratched. Used a Sharpie, a wax pencil, my fingers. And after nearly every layer I had the same reaction: “Oh, I don’t love that.”
But instead of stopping, I stayed.
I added another layer.
Two and a half hours of this—which, for me, is almost unheard of.
Mira was absorbed in her social studies project. Ollie was asleep. My husband is traveling. There was this rare, wide-open stretch of time between breakfast and lunch that belonged entirely to me … to play, to not know, to keep going even when every instinct said I could stop.
That felt like a gift. One I didn’t take for granted.
I still don’t know if I like what I made. I genuinely don’t.
What I know is that I can’t see it clearly anymore. I’ve been with it too long, too close. So I’m letting it rest. I’ll come back in a few days and see what it looks like when I’m no longer inside it.
What I do know is that it looks like nothing I’ve made before. The surface almost feels like textile now … dense with layers, with its own quiet topography.
I don’t know yet whether it wants to become bookmarks, or a chunky little book, or tokens for the Ripple Station.
Maybe all three.
For now, it just gets to sit.
And so do I.
માનસી
