Good Things

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. 

- Edgar Degas

      This Goodreads quote this morning just knocked my socks off.  I don't claim to "do good things" but I sure have fun with my paints and I DO NOT know what I am doing.  Interesting enough, the more I paint and  the more I experiment with technique, color, texture, and tools, the more I like what I do.  When the paper is just taped down and I am standing in front of the whiteness, I simply start in there.  I usually have some idea in my head but where it goes once I start is all new territory.  

      For example, look at the one below, entitled "Mind Doesn't Matter".    Take your choice:  is the content of the box imploding or exploding?   And, in case you were wondering, I don't think the photograph does this painting justice.  The photo cannot convey the boldness and the energy behind the paint......

        Or,  consider something different.  Consider the one on the left below entitled "Broken". Nothing left to say there.  The on on the right is "Bicycle".  Clever title, heh?  This one means a great deal to me.  I painted if about two months after a nasty bike accident that left me healing on the couch for over two months.  I will never forget the sound of my body hitting the windshield of the truck - thump, thump -- twice -- and the realization in my head that, yes, that is the sound of your body bouncing off the truck......

     The next one is stunning, in my humble opinion.  Again, the photo cannot do the painting justice but think winter.  Think starkness.  Think simplicity.  Think tranquility.  That's where I go with this one.

      The next two stand together simply because I like them.  I like the combination of colors and the textures (which are not visible in the painfully insufficient photos).   They have two things in common.  I am drawn to the colors in each of them, though clearly in different ways.  And, secondly, both include a trademark of mine:  walls.  For reasons unknown to me. shades of walls find themselves in so many of my art works.  At one time, I completed a whole series of bold, strong walls.  At one point, a wall was punctured and then the paintings became more like wall fragments.  I still like walls.

       I can now present two that are, at least,  recognizable...... I painted the vase with flowers that you see below on one fine spring day and the bright colors just grab me.  For once, I painted something real, something that other people might be able to understand and yet it still appeals to me.  I know that my paintings don't have to be indiscernible to be attractive to me.  The one on the right below the flowers is an "Ocean View".  No, it's not perfect and, yes, it is full of texture that is not evident in the photo.  I have this one hanging on my office wall as it does remind me to breathe in and feel the serenity that I find at the ocean.  Always a good idea when you are the lifeguard for young teenagers who are floundering in the wicked waves.

     Guess what the blue and redwood brown/red colors below are called?  How about "The Edge"?  I painted this one earlier this fall.  It came to the paper via a vivid night dream (a not uncommon source for my fun with paints).  Below it on the right, is one that might be familiar to you if you were a child who was raised in the Catholic Church.  It is a vivid image in my head and one that was somehow important to paint.

     This is the end of the tour (for now).  I have some more pieces that I want to put up just for fun.  But I have to see how this plays out.  Check out the wheels, rolling away.  There I go.