This is the month of January in my Dates in a Life Walking Project 2025 painting. It's the first month in a year-long painting documenting the number of steps I walked each day. I have documented my steps in paintings since 2016.
I prefer to walk for exercise, as time permits, outside in addition to whatever other walking I do as I go about my day. My goal is to walk as much as I can every day. I use the Pedometer app on my iPhone to document my steps.
The base monoprinted grid is Caribbean Breeze, with Iridescent Bright Gold background paint used to signify the days (mostly weekends, but also including holidays, vacations days, and sick days) I was not at work, which usually gives me more time to walk for exercise than the days I am at work, with the exception of sick days (of course).
Under some individual days, there is a painted line of color to represent reasons that may lower or raise the number of steps I walked that day, such as snow, rainy, extreme hot or cold, illness, and vacation.
I use a system of symbols to represent each thousand steps. Instead of showing exactly how many I walk. The black icons represent up to 9999 steps walked each day, red represents 10,000-19,999 steps and yellow represents 20,000-29,999 steps.
The painting is created with monoprinted textures of a construction fence as the background, handstamped rubber erasers on fabric which are collaged on the background grid, as well as handpainting and stitching on stiffened fabric.
