Abstract Mixed Media painting on canvas Kim Depa Studio Southwest Michigan

The way I see it and the way I paint it. In Layers

Life is not linear. We don't move through one phase, complete it, and arrive neatly at the next. We circle. We expand and contract. We grow in one direction and shrink in another, sometimes in the same afternoon. We are always feeling — even when we're trying not to.

This is how I move through my own life. Growing, expanding, pulling inward, pushing out again. Always somewhere in the middle of becoming something. And it's how I paint my original abstract paintings— layering, covering, uncovering, changing direction when the work tells me to. These mixed media paintings don't follow a plan. They follow the truth of the moment.

These four series ( Fire, Bloom, Belonging, Within) are not stages you complete. They are territories you return to. You might be in Fire on a Tuesday and Within by Thursday. You might live in Belonging for a whole season and wake up one morning in Bloom. The point is not to arrive — the point is to be present to wherever you are right now, and to trust that all of it is part of the same unfolding.

Nature moves this way too. The seasons don't apologize for cycling. The storm doesn't explain itself before it arrives. The tree doesn't question the shedding. This is the same energy — in us, in the work, in the world. These paintings are a record of it.

This is also what my blog The In-Between is about.

Not the before. Not the after. The living-through. The circling back. The moment between the exhale and the next breath, where everything is still in motion and nothing is yet decided. That's where most of life actually happens — and that's where these paintings live. All original mixed media abstract painting on canvas.

Fire

You stopped waiting for permission. You decided. This is what that energy looks like on a wall. Original paintings for the ones who finally stopped asking for permission.

Within

Mixed media paintings for the ones doing the real work — the quiet kind, the kind no one sees. You're still standing. This series knows that.

Belonging

Heavy and comfortable. Cool and calm. Original paintings for the ones whose home already knows their name.

Bloom

Grief and relief and wild becoming — all at once. Original paintings in the Bloom series don't ask you to pick just one.