Begun in the midst of the Covid pandemic, this abstract self portait incorporates various symbolic collage pieces, my love of texture, depth and shades of blue. It was an outpouring of all the layers of emotions going on at the time. Working on it was a very slow process of layering with color and mixed media, and many changing directions - much like life at this time. Then, for many months the painting remained untouched and unfinished. It needed a central, meaningful mark to tie it all together. My heart would start to beat wildly every time I stared at it trying to figure out what that "thing" was, that was needed to finish it. Nothing I could think of seemed right, and I would walk away in frustration.

Finally, after so many unsuccessful attempts, I realized that it was my heart - literally and figuratively. The first layer of the heart was drawn out on tissue paper, covered with personally meaningful words, then crumpled (as our hearts often are in this life), ripped out and pasted onto the canvas. It looked all wrong, so I scraped most of it away, leaving only a few stubborn pieces clinging to the canvas. The next layer was a simple sketched outline of an anatomical heart directly onto the canvas with a gold pen, which gave me the transparency and final result I was looking for: the heART as one.