I still couldn't get motivated, but, I started anyway. I had an old pad of 12x18 inch coated paper...the kind kids use for finger painting. I thought, well, maybe I could just make a big funky palette abstract something or other. 

Once I got started, the creative juices started flowing again. My body ached all over, but, I painted all day, enjoying the shade of our patio, and hanging out with family. 

By the end of the day, I thought for sure, I had made mud...a mess. So I sort of gave up, and made a huge vertical swath of emerald green with my palette knife. And then, the magic started to happen!  

I started seeing the hidden potential inside of all the colors that lay before me. I saw a boat. A Maltese fisherman's boat, like the ones I saw every day in Marsa X'lokk when I went to Malta to visit my cousins. Slowly, but surely, the boat began to appear. 

I have so much fun in this part of the creative process. My husband once had a coworker who's wife made delicious coffee, and in her culture, they would study the way the fine coffee grounds settled down to the bottom of the cup after you finished drinking the coffee. 

This is how I imagine myself, as I study the colors and shapes of an unplanned abstract painting.....Like a fortune teller! The only difference is that I can control the future, with my palette knife! I can change the story. I can remove the past. I can change the future.

If you are on Instagram and like some good ol' Duran Duran,  I made a short 20 second video, with one of my favorite old songs of theirs, to show the progression of this new painting.