It’s an idea I envisioned in high school. High school! It’s sat with me for over 25 years. 

It’s meant to be large, but I didn’t have a large canvas- I didn’t even have a clean canvas. I just found one of the kids’ reject canvases and started creating the lines. 

A few days later…  

Funny story: I decided, on a whim, to go into my front yard to paint this on Saturday morning.  I have a nice, sunny, large backyard but the front was calling to me. We live on a dead end that’s at the corner of a dead end, so basically, not a lot of foot traffic. The kids joined with a friend:   

20 minutes after I started a couple walked by on a morning walk. I said good morning and looked back down. Then I heard “oh my god, Tova?” And I looked up and saw one of my oldest friends in the world walking by my house. We met at 14 and she was a really important person in my life in high school. We were especially close through college in NY and for a few years after, before losing touch. She doesn’t live in San Diego. She just happened to be staying in my neighborhood and just walking by on my dead end street. How crazy bananas is that??? 

I decided it was fate that I was painting in the front of the house on that very day. The next day  I basically got to the point where I thought it was finished-y. 

   I liked the painting, but didn’t love it. But then, it’s my first painting. A little practice and some better paints wouldn’t hurt. 

I hung it on the wall of our family gallery but it felt really flat. Especially next to the kids glitter art. In my mind this painting is strategically sprinkled with Swarovski crystals, but in my mind it’s also 3 feet tall. 

So I pulled out the glitter.  

 Oh, dear glitter.  How I’ve missed you so. I promised Elie no glitter in the house after we moved. Our NJ house basically had it embedded into the floors. 

Seems, I lied. 

I took the glitter in the back room and got busy. 

  
It’s not a great pic, and while I love the sparkle, because of the small size of the canvas, the glitter covered a lot of the color nuances that I liked. 

And I still don’t love the painting. It’s called Lifeline and it’s the beginning of a series I plan to create that uses color to represent the people, experiences and influences that spiral through our lives. Creating it was kinda like writing in a diary and I found myself uncovering feelings about things and people in my life that I didn’t really know existed in me… things I never would have discovered with words. 

I think a little door may be opening….