In 2020 most of the big intense hours of making that Disco were behind me, and as things slowed down, a lot of what I had learned over the years on that project was slowly coalescing and settling in. 

It appears there’s a mechanism to learning. Being the relentless arrow in flight you pick up knowledge, but it will take a moment of rest to pack and unpack it. Keep it in RAM until you find a moment to write it to firmware, so the learned becomes the new baseline. 

Love of messy brush strokes becomes love of a bit more precisely placed messy brush stroke. What previously was a clever way to cover for a lack of understanding started becoming a more deliberate placement of marks on the image.

It still takes time, but there’s less panic. All of a sudden a whole new range of bewildering loud colors are possible to harmonize.

What’s even better somewhere along the way it had become possible to paint on the iPad, away from heavy computers and active posture office chairs. One could paint on the go, one could even paint at a birthday party.

So! What great depth do the images hide?

One is a very simple and universal fantasy: the fantasy of a cool girl.

The other is a picture of friend of mine, with a big mouth and a head full of colorful thoughts, painted live, yammering something interesting on his birthday. 

Maybe pictures of joy.