My Paintings
Grief often lives beyond words.
“Think of it As if He’s Just in the Next Room”
Oil painting on canvas
20” x 20”
Summer 2025
How was this going to work, this living on after losing the love of my life?
Two and a half years since his passing, I’m still surrounded by his memory and influence: the mid-century modern dining set he insisted we buy, the piece of jade collected off the Big Sur coast by one of his patients, the voluminous floral scarf he once picked up at Costco that has served as everything from a wrap to a tablecloth, the intensely red rhododendrons blooming in the sweetheart garden just outside our bedroom window, and his passion for Venetian blown glass, so strong that it once made me pull an emergency U-turn on my way home from Trader Joe’s to stop at an estate sale offering the perfect vase. I’m sure he sent me.
This man, this love, is still profoundly present in my life. I just can’t see him. I like to imagine he’s simply in the next room. His love still surrounds me. As I paint and travel, make new friends, and even consider new relationships, I feel his applause, his encouragement. I’m certain he laughed with me when, after months of work on my first oil painting, a Fauvist still life exercise, I realized it wasn’t just a composition of objects in my dining room. It was, in truth, a portrait of his love on another level.
Pondering the Light
18” x 24”, oil on canvas
October 2025
One summer evening, I sat barefoot in the backyard, soaking in the moonlight. My feet pressed into the grass, grounding me to the Earth. As the clouds drifted and danced in the moon’s glow, I felt a calm knowing that the light from beyond was touching the light within. Somehow, Joe was there too, not in the chair beside me, but in the glow that united his light, my light, the moonlight, all as one.
Joe had died two and a half years earlier. Sitting outside together under the moon had been one of our favorite rituals, sometimes with wine, sometimes tea. After he passed, I continued this practice. At first, the nights were heavy with tears and longing. Over time, the ache softened. I began to notice peace instead of pain, love instead of loss, a quiet glow that felt eternal.
This painting, impressionistic in style, holds that tender moment. Two sources of light; the warm glow of the porch and the silver luminescence of the moon. They blend and balance and coexist. The lightest lights meet the darkest darks, and the moonlight grows stronger, as love does even when shaped by loss.
Grief is a journey we all take at some point, yet how we choose to heal makes the difference.
In stillness, I found peace. In the quiet, I found connection. I discovered that even after loss, there is light. Always, there is light.
