Spring showed up and I finally got my studio back.

The first floor of the barn has been off-limits for a while — too cold, too cluttered, whatever the season throws at you to keep you out of the space you actually want to be in. But the last few weeks the temperature started cooperating, and something in me just said: okay, now.

I dragged everything back in. Set up the easels. Pulled out canvases I hadn’t touched in months. There’s a specific feeling when you’re back in a space that’s yours — not comfortable exactly, more like right. Like a frequency you forgot you were tuned to.

I’ve been working on a few pieces simultaneously. Working in multiples lets things breathe. You put something down on one canvas and walk away to another, and when you come back you see it differently. The paintings kind of talk to each other, too — colors and marks from one bleed into the thinking on the next, even if they’ll never look related when they’re done.

The materials have shifted. I’ve been bringing spray paint into the work alongside quality acrylics, paint markers, and oil paint, and the combination has been keeping me on my toes. Each one has its own logic — the way spray moves versus the way a marker line lands versus what a loaded brush does versus the slow drag of oil. Getting them to coexist on the same canvas is its own puzzle.

It’s good to be back in it. The barn opens up into my backyard, so when the weather’s right I can roll an easel outside and work in the open air — which has been one of the better parts of this spring. I tend to paint early mornings, when the thinking is clearest and nothing else has had a chance to crowd in yet.