The Grace of Bunnies

It has been a phenomenon to me that I can paint bunny after bunny after bunny and still giggle after each one, and what's more -  still want to paint them again!

When I began painting them my approach was to paint them over and over and over again. In doing so I could employ trial and error to figure out how to make the bunnies look exactly how they felt in my heart.

I was compelled to paint them. One of the strongest pulls I can remember. I wouldn't be surprised if I painted 50 back to back. I'll tell you this- at first, they were a struggle and a mess. But God blessed that ever lovin' bunny mess.  

The same approach of painting 50 paintings back to back I have employed for every animal I've set out to learn to paint since: cows, chickens, sheep, horses, ducks.  I was wild haired bug eyed obsessed trying to figure out each animal. When I began painting these other animals I noticed something missing: The struggle. The frustration. 

At the start of the bunny painting craze I realized the frustration I felt wasn't telling me that I couldn't do it, but that I was learning how. Over time, one bunny painting at a time, it got easier. 

The frustration was there because there was a gap between how I wanted the bunnies to look/feel and with the skills I had to make it happen. Happily with each bunny painting, there building quietly beside frustration was my ability to offer myself grace. The grace to learn. 

I only understood this in hind sight, mind you.

The grace to learn was a delicate humble friend by my side. Grace helped me gain momentum by finding gratitude in the failing. "Okay, that's what NOT to do." Grace helped me show up again after mistakes which brought on opportunities for "aha!" moments. Some miraculous color mix would appear, and Grace would nudge me to try to repeat it. My obsession to express with paint how those bunnies felt in my heart, paired with grace, kept me trying again and again and again. 

Grace helped me not internalize the frustration by taking it personally. Grace reasoned with me that the frustration was only there because I was learning, not because I couldn't do it. Grace gave me the time to gain the skills I needed.

That gentleness led me to being able to intuitively know my palette, zone out and allow my heart for the animal to translate through paint. What I found was that the painting itself carried all the joy, peace, and utter delight I feel over those sugar bunny wuns.

I wish in the beginning stages I would have told myself to just have fun, to rest in it. I couldn't - I hadn't yet learned the element of giving myself the grace to. The grace to let my skills catch up with my vision.

When people ask me for tips for starting out - my go to is:  "Give yourself the grace to learn! Paint what's on your heart to paint!" I tell them: No one who sets out to play the piano expects to play a seamless Beethoven piece right out of the gate. They understand the need for practice, learning tempo, scale, notes, and allowing time for muscle memory. 

It's the same with painting. All great painters did not start at great. They began at the beginning with a compelling internal force to paint and kept showing up over and over. They had a bunny. And another. And another. And another. Maybe not a bunny, but one thing is certain- they offered themselves grace along the way.

After an abounding number of bunny paintings, I began to ask myself a few things: Will I ever tire of painting these? Why do I like these so much? 

Twenty years ago I was obsessed with running trails. I ran and ran and ran and ran. I ran the same trails over and over and over again for hours. They felt like they were mine. Well, I guess instead of that, I felt like I was apart of them, they were a part of me. They were familiar, I didn't have to think, I just had to run. I was apart of the drive that wore the dirt trail down and the trail's mud caked up the back of my shins were apart of me.

That's how painting the bunnies have become. What started as a compelling need to figure it out, turned into a familiar path that has brought me so much comfort and belonging. 

I thrive still in the push to learn. In the studio I have days where I HAVE to paint other things. Other animals. Recently I've found the pull to figure out stilllife paintings or sketch my children. I've bent over art books studying historical art trailblazers - picturing them sewing pockets in their jackets for the sketchbooks they carried around everywhere. I've shown up in places out of my league not to mention comfort zone to learn plein air from a teacher who is way more obsessed with capturing a day outdoors than I have ever been with bunnies. He has pushed me to reach deeper and further by setting a bar I wouldn't have even seen had he not described it to me with that same grace. It's become another source of belonging.

But every now and then - by that I mean -very regularly, there is still that familiar trail I love to find myself on. One where I don't have to think, or push. All I have to do is feel delight and let it move my hand. The initial place I found I was surrounded behind and before with grace. Those bunnies.

I'm giggling about this specifically - out of all the animals I love- at the start I was intensely drawn to the one whose nature is to mass multiply. I never could have forseen the mass multiplication in and around me from painting them. Thank you God for that sponsoring impression you put in my heart years ago to paint bunnies. And today for the clear understanding of your abounding grace by my side working to reap a harvest of more than I could have imagined.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us, to him be the glory..." Ephesians 3:20-21