Burning to Say Something 18x24 Mixed Media on Paper

$324.00

Burning to Say Something

18x24 • Mixed Media on Paper

Before any paint touched the paper, I wrote three sentences in pencil, in cursive, across the surface:
“Now is the only time there is.”
“Burning to say something!”
“Such a burning in me!”

They come from a long out-of-print children’s book by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Nicola Bayley—lines that have lived quietly inside me for years and surface again and again when I’m creating.

I began this piece by staining the paper with cold coffee, letting it dry, letting it settle. Over that, I layered loose washes of blue, magenta, and brown, thinking about how much lives beneath the surface—how much wants to be expressed. Not one big statement, but many small ones. Little truths. Small urgencies. The accumulation of things waiting to be said.

Once the paint dried, I returned with pencil scribbles, marks, dots of oil pastel, and small touches of gold acrylic—signals, sparks, quiet flares. The surface holds both restraint and release, structure and urgency.

Something Is Burning In Me is about creative pressure as life force. About the insistence of expression. About honoring the fire—not to extinguish it, but to let it speak, mark by mark.