The Spiral Kiss, acrylic & oil on canvas, © 2025 D. Yael Bernhard
Every year on New Year’s Day, I do a small painting. From start to finish, no matter how small, I complete my first work of art before the first sunset of the new year. Starting off the year on a creative foot is important. Even if nothing more than a symbolic gesture, it declares my commitment to making art a priority in my life.
Last week, I fulfilled another, smaller promise to myself – to clean out some drawers in my bedroom before the end of 2024. In doing so, I came across this little doodle, drawn in ballpoint pen on a piece of memo paper:
The postcards, notebooks, and hand-written letters in this drawer dated back many years. I have no idea how old this sketch is, but do I know what I was thinking when I drew it. It’s an image of a relationship, of two people spiraling toward each other from opposite directions. Their circuitous paths cross each other before coming together in the center, where one person gives and the other receives a kiss. In giving and receiving, in profile and full front, the two faces represent opposites – yet they are also similar. The upside down face is a nod to Chagall, whose art has inspired me all my life – and suggests also the body position of two lovers who have perhaps fallen asleep curled around each other, until one of them wakes up and gently rouses the other.
These two figures also resemble an embryo. Just as it’s miraculous for all the parts of a new life to correctly form into a newborn baby, it seems almost as miraculous when an intimate partnership forms into a lasting union. We live in an era in which the individual is held sacred. In this age of self-improvement and personal development. families are forged and just as quickly fall apart. Our lives become so complicated, fraught with dreams and ambitions, career choices, parenting responsibilities, debts to pay, addictions to break, wanderlust to fulfill. The older we get, the harder it is to join two lives together. The embryonic meeting of these two individuals is born of their separate destinies. Somehow, despite all the obstacles, their two paths have spiraled together and formed a union.
The image also speaks to the ebb and flow that happens within a relationship, as our individual paths continue to unfold. Will these two people continue to grow together, or will they grow apart?
The painting only asks the question. The answer is up to you, the viewer.
I only used a few colors in this painting, working in water-based oils on a 9”x12” canvas. I used a razor blade to scratch in the fine white lines – a technique that works well when oil paint is only one layer thick. When I did the original doodle, I was striving to create a textured gradient, so that is what I aimed for in the painting as well. In ballpoint pen, a gradient can only be a scribbled texture. In oil paint, it can be beautifully blended.
What better way to start off the new year?
Wishing my readers all the best in 2025 – may it be a year of creativity, good health, and fulfilling relationships.
D. Yael Bernhard
https://dyaelbernhard.com
Have you seen my other Substack, The Art of Health? In addition to being a visual artist, I’m also a certified integrative health & nutrition coach with a lifelong passion for natural food cooking and herbal medicine. Now in its second year, this illustrated newsletter explores cutting-edge concepts of nutrition. I strive to make relevant information clear and accessible, and to anchor essential health concepts in unique images. Check it out, and if you like it, please subscribe and help spread the word. Your support keeps my work going!