48" x 36" oil on gallery wrapped-canvas
 

She may be my favorite piece—though she certainly didn’t make it easy. Late Bloomer and I spent months in a playful standoff. Every time I thought she’d found her form, she shifted again. At one point, I joked with a friend that I’d have to sell her by the pound—there was so much paint on the canvas, I nicknamed her "Ten Ton Tilly."

 

Abstracts often look effortless in the end, but this one demanded patience, persistence, and a touch of whimsy.

 

Then one quiet morning, a hibiscus caught my eye—vivid, pink, and proud. That’s when I knew: this was who Tilly was becoming. I returned to the canvas with fresh clarity, and, at last, she bloomed.