72 Pieces of One Painting

I made a painting knowing I was going to cut it apart. Which is a strange way to begin making something.

Normally, when you spend hours building up layers of watercolour, paint, ink, salt, marks and whatever else happens to be within reach, the general idea is to eventually stand back and decide that it is finished.

My plan was to finish it and then take a knife to it. This was the first original artwork I made for Ever + Hence.

Before the envelopes. Before anyone really knew what this little experiment was going to become. Before I knew whether fifty people would be interested enough to let me send something to their mailbox.

I had a large sheet of cotton paper taped down and divided into a grid of seventy-two little squares.

Each one would eventually become a 3-inch-by-3-inch original. But I didn’t paint seventy-two little paintings. I painted one.

One thing first

The whole sheet was worked on together.

Watercolour moved across several squares at once. Salt went into the wet paint and made its own decisions. I added tempera paint sticks, Posca pens, Sharpies, alcohol ink, mica sprays, stamps and whatever else seemed right while I was working.

Some areas became loud. Some barely had anything happening in them. There were sections I loved immediately and others I kept fussing with because apparently I am incapable of leaving well enough alone.

Eventually the tape came off.

And there it was: one large piece of work divided into seventy-two small windows. Only then did I start cutting. That was the interesting part.

A mark that looked insignificant on the whole sheet suddenly became the most important thing in a tiny square. A colour combination I hadn’t paid much attention to became its own little composition. Some pieces ended up very busy. Others were almost quiet.

None of them matched.

But all of them belonged to the same thing.

Why seventy-two?

The number wasn’t random. My Mom turned 72 in January. She died in April. I didn’t make this painting as a memorial piece in the usual sense. I wasn’t trying to create something sad, and I didn’t want seventy-two tiny paintings carrying the weight of an explanation they never asked for.

But Ever + Hence was beginning during a year when grief had already rearranged quite a lot of my life. Pretending that had nothing to do with what I was making would have been ridiculous. So seventy-two became a quiet way of carrying her into the beginning of this. Not as the entire story. Just as part of it.

The painting was made on August 10, 2026 — the 222nd day of the year — at Fourfold Common, the fictional little place that has slowly begun creeping into the world of Ever + Hence.

The finished work was numbered 26-222-01/72 – 26-222-72/72

I like records like that.

Dates. Numbers. Tiny bits of context that may mean absolutely nothing to someone else but help me remember exactly where something belonged in time.

Then I gave it away

The first Ever + Hence mailing became Nº000 — the Explorer Edition.

I was looking for fifty curious people with mailboxes who were willing to receive something without really knowing what I was going to send them.

Each Explorer envelope included one of those original pieces.

That meant somebody in one place received a square containing a bit of bronze mica and black ink.

Somebody else received a piece where blue watercolour had wandered into something orange.

Another person got a mostly quiet corner.

No one could choose.

Neither could I.

Once the pieces were created, the whole thing became wonderfully out of my control.

And I think that was probably important.

Because this entire project was an experiment in letting something leave my hands.

Make it.

Send it.

See what happens.

The part I keep thinking about

Somewhere out there now, pieces of that original painting are sitting in different houses.

Maybe one is tucked into a journal. Maybe another is pinned over somebody’s desk. One might still be sitting inside the envelope it arrived in. And there are pieces from the same painting whose owners will probably never meet each other or even know where the rest went. I love that.

Not because it needs some enormous philosophical explanation. I just like knowing that something which once existed as one object is now scattered around in little pieces of mail.

It feels appropriate for Ever + Hence.

The point was never to create precious objects that had to be preserved perfectly. I wanted people to receive something made by an actual person. Something with marks on it. Something that had been handled. Something that couldn’t be duplicated exactly if I tried. And then they could decide what happened to it next.

From Nº000 to Nº001

The Explorer Edition was exactly what its name suggested. It let me test the idea. Would people sign up? Would the envelopes survive the postal system? Would anyone understand what I meant when I described Ever + Hence as something between mail, art, a physical interactive blog post and a tiny monthly creative experience?

I learned quite a lot. Some things worked. Some things are already changing. And there are several things I’m very glad I tried on Nº000 instead of discovering them after Nº001.

Now I’m working on October. The first numbered edition. There are new pieces being made, new ideas being tested, and quite a bit of paper taking over surfaces that were not originally intended to become worktables.

But those seventy-two little squares are still the beginning for me. One painting. Cut apart. Sent away.

And suddenly Ever + Hence wasn’t just an idea sitting in my studio anymore.

It was out in the world.