When the Studio Window Becomes Part of the Painting

There's a moment that happens sometimes in the studio that no amount of planning can produce, you look up from the canvas, and the thing you've been painting for the last hour is standing right outside your window.

That's exactly what happened while I was working on this piece. I'd been building up the canopy layer by layer, teal, green, and yellow strokes stacked until the texture started to feel less like paint and more like actual foliage catching light. Somewhere around the last few brushstrokes, I stepped back, and there it was: the tree just outside my studio, doing the same thing the canvas was doing. Same density of leaves, same flicker of light through the branches. Two versions of the same idea, one real and one painted, standing a few feet apart.

I filmed the process almost by accident, the light was good, the kimono I was wearing (a flea-market find covered in cranes and clouds) seemed like it belonged in the same color world as the painting. What started as a quick clip turned into something that actually captures how these pieces get built: not in one gesture, but in hundreds of small, repeated ones, until a canopy appears out of what was just canvas an hour before.

You can watch the full process video here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/X_jdkWIclDM

The finished painting is available here: https://www.artfinder.com/product/a-color-stands-abroad/