Tiny paintings

The other night I was "bored," which loosely translates to "I have so many options to choose from that I cannot figure out what to do with myself." I felt the sudden urge to make some tiny paintings using acrylic paint, so I set to digging out my supplies.

As I rummaged through my bins of paints and brushes, I stumbled across some smooth wooden disks, leftovers from a project I did in college. The wood is from the branch of my grandparents' lemon tree, which stood mighty in the backyard of their South San Francisco home for many many years. Lemons as big as my head, I say. AS BIG AS MY HEAD! (Slight exaggeration. Maybe.) I was really, really sad when it needed to be cut down several years back, and my Uncle Carl saved me a small piece of the branch.

I don't know what it was about that tree, but it was such an important piece of my childhood and my memories of my grandparents' home. So I put away the paper I had planned to paint on and used the dense wood instead. I painted memories of their home, a handful of things I remember best: A yellowish house (it looked nothing like the one in the painting, but still); the fog rolling in; my grandmother's button collection; ants in the kitchen; and of course, big juicy lemons.

And this last little piece shows some little houses that exist only in my imagination. Just for fun.

Memory and place is a recurring theme for me. I can't ever shake it. I'll never shake the memory of the lemon tree, or of their home, or of them. It's wonderful what happens when you open a box and inspiration hits you so squarely and perfectly in the face.