Painting the Moon

The paint brush hit the canvas in November, the moment the election results became clear.

There was no language for my feelings and my body longed to shake and cry and remain in bed.

Yet, there's living to do. 

There are children to feed. 

There's loving to give and births to attend.

Our lives are worth the fight.

“You belong in each and every phase of your beautiful life.”

I have never really painted before. 

I laid out a project for my daughter when she was off of school on election day; she painted when we were still sparked with hope. The following day, she asked me to finish her painting. It was as if she knew that colors and stroking of brushes would help me refine my breath and light.

I've always longed to paint the moon.  Ideas began to brew.

What colors make a moon? 

How do you give the moon contour and texture? 

What represents the sky?

How are craters formed? 

These are the questions I ask as I delve into the flow of making circles, colors, and lines. 

My heart guides as I find my body and feet.

My hands allow the art to come from a place beyond self.

I'm not a hundred percent sure what I'm painting for and I'd never call myself a painter, even though I am painting. 

I am painting life. 

I make art because that's what life is and it's imperfect because that's what life is.

Maybe I am painting for the little girl within. The little girl who fights to know the language of self love despite human limitations, of the meaning of community even when community feels painful, messy, and frightening. She paints for the ongoing necessity of learning the needs of her brown body, of her tender, tired hips, and of her adipose tissue that longs to be caressed and loved as every tearing part of her longs to be loved.

I am painting to trust all I come into contact with: others' pain, projections, and dreams. 

The hardest dreams to sit with don't belong to me alone.

I paint for racial justice, for birth justice, for human justice. Sometimes when my right hand makes circular motions, I feel the rootedness of interconnection and the support of guides and ancestors.

Painting becomes sacred, my spiritual practice. 

I paint pain, yours and mine.

I am painting the moon.

Full moon art and sleeping Ashley