I went to the park and got drenched in pink flowers

I am writing this while sitting in the park. It's a warmer day, the sun is settling in, and the wind is bringing small pink petals toward me like confetti.

April has been a month filled with moments of disbelief. If I had to give it a color, it would be pink, potent, and saturated.

The pink petals are coming from a tree that has flowers growing directly out of its bark in patches. I've never seen anything like it. No leaves, just spots of bright pink, like the trunk grew a patchy beard. I looked them up, they're called eastern redbuds, and they bloom directly out of the bark in early spring. As the season goes on, they turn into little green canopies and eventually seed pods that disperse.

I know I have a tendency to look at everything as a metaphor, but I love how the buds simply emerge and then evolve from there. I follow the same pattern while painting, starting from a recurring thought and reworking until the final picture is found. I think planning can only go so far, and most answers come from just starting, even if it looks awkward at first.

I started this piece with my usual pink underpainting, and instead of using opaque paint to mark things out, I watered down several glossy colors to be translucent and layered them over one another in floral patterns. I then used matte opaque paint to add the webs and line work over these translucent forms.

For most of the time I worked on this piece, the layers looked extremely stark and awkward; nothing felt cohesive. Only at the very end did things begin to make sense. When I finished the last stroke, it felt like every line finally found its purpose.

The original is 11x14" in size and was made using gouache and acrylic on canvas.