The title of this series announced itself in my head one day when I was looking at my painting, On Saturn's Edge, Exuberance. A mouthful of a title, to be sure, though the way the metallic leaf pieces formed in the wet paint did somewhat resemble the rocky outer rings of Saturn. It wasn't until later that I learned from Lyn Cowan's book, Portrait of the Blue Lady: The Character of Melancholy, about the ancient mythology of the Roman god Saturn and his association with melancholy, as well as the intimate relationship between exuberance and melancholy.
As I created more and more canvases with intense colors and metallic leaf, it struck me that the vibrance of the colors and the bright shininess of the metallics accurately expressed my experience of exuberance—that intoxicating feeling of unrestrained enthusiasm for life.