A new chapter

As some of you know I have stopped working full time to focus on painting full time. Or as full-time as time allows. It’s funny because when I thought about writing this “blog,” which I don’t know if anyone is going to read anyway, I had a ton of ideas of what I was going to say. Now that the laptop is open, I’m blank. It’s very different from writing the two fiction books I have done and harder than the non-fiction I’m working on about my travels and adventures. (This will be a great new chapter.) But one thing I do know: I’m not blocked with my new painting, I have more ideas than I can keep up with.

My black and white pieces I did in the past were wonderful, but I did struggle with ideas and content. A few at the end became a bit of a stretch, and perhaps that’s why it slowed down and eventually stopped. For the past month, something shifted. And in some way, it is based on American painter Robert Henri’s saying, “Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you." Paul Cezeanne said, painting must be grounded in sensory experience and emotion rather than just photographic accuracy, sometimes paraphrased as, "Paint what you feel, not what you see.” Well, both are partially true for me. For me it is, “Paint what you feel. Paint how you see it. Paint what is real inside of you.”