Sunset Sparks (looking back)

Present/Future Self Pulling the Past

I’ve been looking back a lot lately. So much has changed in the last few years — and I’ve been moving moving moving — looking back seems to be helping me go forward.

Yes, I was painting. Now, I am not painting (until I am painting again). I know even when I’m not painting I’m still creating. And I am glad I let painting be my work while I had the space. Even when I didn’t feel like laying down paint, I did. It was a strange feeling working while knowing my mother’s life was coming to an end, there was a layering, a dovetail — her zero-point was also a disintegration/reintegrtion of an aspect of myself moving through space and time, this life.

I’m grateful to be able to look back. I’m grateful to move forward.

(July 21, 2026)

Sunset Sparks / Process

Sometimes after paintings show, I change them. This one shouted at me to do more. I knew exactly what had to be done.

I had two weeks to create work for the Kingston Pop Museum – I said yes to the show before I had any work at all. It was a risky move, especially considering my pace for painting large scale work.

I worked furiously.

I’m glad I agreed to the show – it got me moving and thinking in a new way. I think it made me stronger – or at least more flexible.

This piece evolved from a doodle I did while at a Werewolves of Brooklyn rehearsal in April 2022. I have books and books of drawings interspersed within personal writings and lyrics and notes and poetry. A few of the doodles from that particular rehearsal session ended up in this series of paintings.

(As I write this, it occurs to me that the show at the museum was called The Summer of Rock. While my paintings were serene – some of them were initially conceived while I was practicing music!)

Sometimes talking helps

G Clamp was a piece I kept looking at and wanting to do more with, but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. It kept tugging at me. I initially was going to do something very different – I even made a video to try to work it out in my mind. Sometimes talking it out helps.

G Clamp

I did do a bit in the background of the piece, but painted where I said I wasn’t going to paint.

I looked and looked and looked for days, and finally I tried brown orange on the edge. I love that the inner ribs of the cardboard show in this piece, but I didn’t want to paint the ribs. Instead I stained alongside the ribs.

The edges were all I could do, all I could see. I didn’t have time to sit with this painting for it to reveal to me what was next.

I like that the markings of ideas are still on the surface of the cardboard. I like showing the markings and process in the finished bit of work.

I called this piece G Clamp.

I was happy with this piece. I was happy with all the pieces in the show. And I got the piece down, and I saw it. I saw exactly what had to happen. And so I changed it.

What the work wants

And the show came down and I came back to Brooklyn and the dust settled. I got grounded in my studio and I changed the piece.

Back in the Studio, updating G Clamp and changing the name to Sunset Spark (G Clamp Reprise) – one of the pieces from the Kingston Pop Museum show, and getting back to work.

Doing what the work wants.

I like using this prayer from Julia Cameron’s book, the Artist’s Way – “God, I’ll create the quantity, you create the quality.” Muses, Universe, Infinite Spirit, etc . . . Thank you!

holly troy ~ sacred folly

Sunset Sparks (looking back)