Painting Story: In the Dark, There Is Light
January 12, 2024
“It seems like everything feels hard right now. What would make you feel good?”
I was on the phone with a friend, having one of those desperate and necessary conversations where you pour your heart out and feel seen.
Why, yes, everything IS hard right now.
Which is what I wanted to say but couldn’t, my voice catching in my throat as my eyes welled with tears. How many times had I written those exact words, “things are really hard right now,” in my journal over the last several weeks?
And yet it was on this sweaty walk in the heat of summer—on the phone with my friend—that something changed for me.
What WOULD feel good right now?
The answer was quite simple: Stop postponing my life. Do the thing you want to do. Which, at the time, was book the plane ticket to Denver to hike my first 14er. Which was painting, writing, and living out my soul’s purpose—not wallowing in sadness, worry, pity, and despair.
“It stops today,” I wrote the next morning. “My life does not cease to exist with sadness, struggles, and heartache. I still have work to do. Big, important, impactful, soul-nourishing work.”
My mission, as I wrote it that same morning?
Inspire you to your fullest potential.
Lead from darkness to light.
Lift you up and hold you to your highest level, reminding you—what is this experience teaching you?
Bring you higher.
Feel the suffering of the world to alleviate it.
Spread beauty through sight, sound, taste, smell, and expression.
It was the very same day that I brushed my last stroke of paint onto In the Dark, There Is Light.
I began this painting weeks earlier, in the midst of some deep pain. I still look back on my tear-soaked journals from this time and wince. Times were raw, and times were indeed hard, like my friend said.
The second layers of this painting got created the day before a therapy session in which I was saying that I just wanted this raw feeling to go away. I wanted it to be over. And my therapist (ironically not even knowing that I’m an artist) responded with something profound:
“Life is like a watercolor painting,” she said. “Sometimes you get things you didn’t expect, but it’s on the paper. How will you respond now? Sometimes the whole beautiful painting is made from those hard-won, unexpected moments.”
It was a similar sentiment shared by an art business mentor a mere week later, when I told her that I “hated” the painting, and I was done with it and ready to move on.
“I’m not sure why,” she said. “It just needs more paint. Be okay with ruining it. It needs more. Push. Go big. You have to let yourself let go.”
She saw something in my work that I had always felt—a balance of calm and darkness. An endurance amidst the unknown, she said. Beauty in resilience. She said she saw me using hiking and painting to push myself and to see what I’m capable of. I just needed to embrace that pushing with this painting.
Two days later, I revisited the painting, and I gave it more paint. I let go. And the next day, I added a little more paint. I went bolder, bigger, braver.
The painting began to glimmer beneath my eyes in the studio. The calming blues and lavenders against the deep teals and emotion-rich plums and olives. It reminded me of the harshness and yet immense beauty of sunlight shining through trees leaves in a forest. The painting—born of deep pain and rich with emotion—made me feel calm. Inspired even.
In that moment, I knew I had done it, and I was elated.
In the Dark, There Is Light will always be a special painting, as it was the first that I finished in the New Beginnings collection—the first that I made during this hard season in which I was scared to express myself in the studio because I didn’t want to confront those hard and heavy emotions.
But as they say, the only way out is through. And this painting is indeed evidence. It is a reminder of the beauty and possibility made through hard times.
In the Dark, There Is Light is available to collect. Inquire about bringing its sense of calm, strength, and resilience into your home by emailing hello@stephaniekirklandart.com.
