This post shares the timeline of the album cover art called "Ember's Tiger"...for the album Mirroring the Wildness. It has been over 4 years in the making...
I purchased this large canvas right after my dad's funeral on Feb. 1, 2022. I hung the blank canvas on the wall to symbolize the excitement of having a blank canvas ahead of me...I truly had no idea what life had in store, and I tried to see that as exciting, and not unsettling...
Little by little, I began to wipe my paint from my brushes onto this canvas. Every time I painted a wall or a door or a painting, I would first clean my brushes here, then take them to wash. It was slow and lovely layering process. I did that off and on throughout 2022.
Then in early 2023, just after shattering my leg, I had this painting as a backdrop to my music promo shots taken in my home while my leg was in a cast and I was in a lot of pain.
It stayed like this for a long while, just getting a little here and a little there...
Then on April 27, 2024 I returned to the canvas with dark red and black like blood...I painted confusion, heartache, shock, grief, and pain into it...and then I kept on painting over the next few days...I painted a house, and light, and a river, and anything I could imagine emerging from this layered color and darkness...it was a really fun journey to see what I could uncover and discover in there...the bulk of it was done on this very day exactly 2 years ago...
And then on March 9, 2024, I brought the giant canvas out into my living room and decided to paint a giant tiger on the canvas...and I remembered having a rough sketch that hung on my wall from September 2019 through most of 2020 and 2021...until I finally took it down and placed it into a drawer. But that tiger felt like my protector. It reminded me every morning and every night of my courage, my power, my awakening...
So now, I wanted a huge version to be in my room as that same powerful, daily reminder...
And so the tiger was born...it crawled out of the darkness and the light, and emerged powerful and bold.
And I kept on painting over the next few days...and would add in a bit here and a bit there slowly over the next few months...until just the other day, post another trying time, this time with blood sugar issues really taking me down in early April. I realized that the album needed to go to the printer and the artwork was not yet finished! So on April 17th, I pulled the painting back out into the living room and diligently worked for hours...I pulled in some lights, some darks, some vibrant color, some texture and tried my best to finish what felt like a perpetual work that could not really have an end...
So here it is. In a somewhat finished form. And who know...maybe this too will change and evolve and not remain a tiger. I have no idea. But for now, I am calling this "Ember's Tiger"...
And the journey continues.
Hopefully she will bring a beautiful reminder to us all of our own internal power...and remind us to reconnect to our wild and beautiful bodies, and trust in their wisdom...and return to the wildness...she is mirroring it for us.
Vanessa