When I started working on this kimono, I was wrapping up several months of total absorption in an in-depth year of painting and drawing what and who I 
saw along my country road . (Come Walk With Me, the virtual exhibit) Now after some shifting gears, I know it’s time to move on. I was surprised in some ways when my contemplation of what comes next, led me to another kimono.
Like anyone else who loves watching things grow, I had been amazed at how lush the growth in the fields and on the mountains were in southeast Tennessee this fall in spite of how little rain we had . My morning walks were filled with luxurious colors that were speckled with autum’s special end-of-season light. When I “worked” on this kimono, every time I picked up my brush, it drew me to the green corner of my palette and in the course of a few weeks, this kimono came to be, and with a new kimono shape in the series, perhaps an indication that new things are happening there.
For those of you curious about the process, this started with a coat of gesso, a thick acrylic primer used on raw canvas to prepare for an acrylic painting. In this case, I used it to cover a painting I wasn’t happy with to create a new surface. While it was still wet, I pressed leaves and stems from some of the summer’s vines and left them there until the gesso was just about dry. The texture didn’t reveal itself well until I added color, which I did intuitively and heavily. Once the paint was dry, I scraped the entire rough and highly textured piece with a single edge razor blade, revealing the pattern of the raised areas in the gesso. A final buff with a soft cloth and it was abundantly clear to me that “Abundance” was done and filled with the gratitude in my heart.
I had been hoping to kind of “wrap up” the series with kimono #25 some time during 2025. It just sounded like a good thing to do. (the “clever tone of 25 in 25” just sounded like it had soul…) The kimonos, however, have a mind of their own. “Abundance” led to yet another kimono in a fairly short period of time.
You can review the entire kimono series and how it got started here.
