Quilt of Life

When a woman is balancing work and family, her career is seldom like a hockey stick and it’s more like a quilt, where she has to work with whatever she has on her hand. This was my take away from a Women In Tech conference I attended back in 2005. At the time my first born had just turned one and it had been a rough year for me juggling home and work. Therefore the metaphor of a “quilt” versus a straight line trajectory has stayed with me.

Whatever life throws at you, make a quilt with it,

Sometimes the patch will not match with the rest,

Sometimes it will push you in a direction that’s not your first choice,

Sometimes it will make you redo and start afresh,

Nevertheless, have faith and go with the flow.

From idea to painting

You can see, how I started with a sketch using soft pastels on black sanded surface. After coloring it the result looked so bad that I rinsed it off under the running water.

Because I wanted to show fabric textures, oil on canvas was a better choice than watercolor. Even though oil takes much longer to dry versus acrylic, I like the glow or shine the oil paints have.

After painting the center piece, I played around with different options for the fabric patterns. From using actual scraps, to making swatches with watercolor, I painted certain patterns.

The colors and patterns looked nice in watercolor but when I painted them on canvas they started to look like worms and virus. Maybe all the images of Spike protein and science papers that I have been reading for work invaded my painting too. This was a cue for me to take a break, go out for a walk to clear my head and start afresh.

Back from a hike, I used a palette knife and re-painted the whole background. The layers of the pattern just added the additional texture as I spread the oil paints with a knife over the canvas. That’s the advantage of using oil or acrylic. If I don’t like something I can come back and paint over it. With watercolor or pastel I have to start all over again.

Stitching a quilt is an exercise of mixing, matching and making the best of what is available. The quilt will grow in different directions based on what patches are available and so is life. So, whatever patch life throws at you build a quilt with it.