36x36 acrylic/ gold leaf/ canvas/ resin. Ready to hang. 

Long December on the radio hits differently when it’s December 1st and I’m driving up the coast, halfway to Orange County before 7 a.m. I feel old but ageless as my expression matches the listless pale of the gray winter sky. Long December is one of my favorite songs in life. It sounds like an ending but at the same time a beginning. Like the peace of surrender matching the passion of trying. Or maybe a balance of in-between, like a glimmer of being a teenager who hadn’t grown up quite yet. I like wondering what it would feel like to be able to drive. 

There are very few versions of my own ghosts that I get to visit that I can catch in a memory of what it felt like, to be her. So much so that every winter I make a painting about it. The song is also about forgiveness, which I appreciate. It lets me know that despite our perceived differences when we’re in forgiveness, all of our minds are joined. And when we’re in forgiveness, it’s less likely to be haunted. The mind that is. 

For me, during the holidays, the guides and ghosts that watch over us get to physically see and experience us much more clearly. They can see us so clearly because of the extra light we intentionally put into our spaces and experiences throughout December. The only catch is the understanding of the haunting of loss, and mentally preparing to have hope anyway. Hope that it will all work out, whatever it happens to be. Hope that pain will change into vision and not blindness. I mean hope certainly isn’t a strategy. But it’s nice to feel from time to time. 

That’s why I put 2,000 lights on my tree. I want the ghosts to all know that I still believe in something, that I haven’t forgotten them, and that I welcome their presence. There are so many figures in this painting, having a visit in form as a shape - individual ghosts making up a portrait in waves of forgiveness, hope, contrast, and the power of change.