Description
A Large Mixed Media Painting with Collage
All Is Well & Good Now is a large mixed media painting I created in 2025 using acrylic, mixed media, and collage. I built the painting through translucent layers of paint, preserved antique book fragments, and intuitive mark-making. Throughout the process, I protected memory, healing, continuity of life, and the caring ways we move through time.
I began this painting with pages from Helen Grant, Teacher, a 1909 book that I treasured in my collection. During this time, I was also in a season of downsizing. I couldn’t bring myself to let go of the book, so I preserved fragments of its pages within this work. And now the book will continue to live through art.
A Fictional Story ~ Honoring Continuity of Care
I felt drawn to the fictional story because of its title. Â But even more interesting to me, is the continuity of care ~ someone else had clearly held, read, and treasured it for more than a century before I did.
By incorporating its pages, I am honoring all of us who held onto Helen Grant, Teacher. The continuity of care, imagination, memory, and human connection are shared across time.
Looping organic forms drift across the surface like remembered spaces, vessels, or fragments of nature. Fragments of text emerge and disappear beneath luminous layers of pink, violet, aqua, soft gray, ochre, and pale green. The painting moves between concealment and revelation and invites viewers to pause, wonder, and discover quiet moments hidden within the surface.
A Large Mixed Media Painting and a Teacher
Before becoming a professional artist, I was a certified teacher.  But my course changed when illness arrived and left me disabled for more than a decade. Through healing and recovery, I began to understand that care and giving can take many forms ~ and that art heals.
In this work, teaching becomes less about a classroom and more about honoring paths of life ~ creating space to pause, wonder, reflect, and find meaning within the layers.
My Guides in this Large Mixed Media Painting
A story, a sense of space, and motion were my guides as I built this painting through layers of abstraction and contrast. I used round forms beside sharp points, transparent against opaque, thick marks beside thin, large with small, and warm with cool.
This large mixed media painting balances softness with structure, atmosphere with materiality, and abstraction with emotional resonance. Its layered surface rewards close observation, as it reveals subtle details, organic movement, and intuitive marks.
Like life itself, the painting holds tension, unpredictability, and movement. Yet, beneath the complexity, lives a quieter truth ~ when we pause long enough to notice the small gifts around us, we begin to see that all is well & good now.
Gallery Wrapped Infinity View Sides
After I painted All Is Well & Good Now flat on the wall, I had it professionally stretched for my signature gallery wrapped infinity view sides. This presentation allows the painting to continue seamlessly around the edges. And it creates a clean, contemporary finish ready for display.
Title: All Is Well & Good Now
Artist: Melissa Lea Simmons
Year: 2025
Medium: Acrylic, collage, and mixed media on canvas
Original: One-of-a-kind original artwork
Orientation: Vertical
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