Category: Creativity

Artists are not orderly by nature. If you are you are lucky. We get into the zone and nothing seems as important as getting the next thing done so we toss aside everything that is in our way.
I have been known to toss aside people who get in my way which is not a good thing.
creativity is a compelling force and when it calls everything tunes out in my mind.
Then I have to deal with the aftermath of the hurricane.
My studio is a mess with brushes with paint all over them and 15 open bottles of paint. everything is all over.
Sometimes I wish I had an assistant who would stand by me and hand me what I want and then put it away when I am through with it.
But that person has to be me.
Now I am trying to learn to clean as I go. If I use the space between thought and clean up for contemplation it is not so bad and might even help the process. I used to walk down the hall to wash my brushes every 10 minutes when my studio was not by the water source. But now it is right by my hand so I paint pretty fast and maybe I need that time to think. Order is important to control the whirlwind a little and maybe direct it more skillfully.
This is Sunday so I am thinking how God is orderly and how that should apply to me too.
There is so much power in not being a disorganized person. You don’t have to took for anything and you have everything you need when you need it. And that is good.

A client sometimes wants a bigger version of a painting I already did.
This is fun to do as I don’t have to think up the original idea so that is easy but the hard part comes when I have to recreate what I think they like about the first one. Maybe it is the color. Or the look in her eyes or the splotchy layered variation of undercoat.
Well if it is the first two that is pretty doable.
But what is hard is trying to do again the background layers. My technique is so one of a kind that it is difficult to put together the same combination again to get the look.
So to overcome that, I have to do a painting that is better than the first one.
If I do that they wont mind that the layers are not the same .
So even if I do a copy of an old painting it is always going to be unique. I cannot replicate exactly the first one ever again. No never.
And that is the best thing. You should get your own painting done just for you.

Sometimes the portrait I am doing is not exactly a mirror image of the person.
That is not what I do. I do an impression of what I see.
That is what you are paying for. If you want exactly the persons face with zero variations then you should just stick with a photo.
If a child looks a little older than he actually is that is because their face will look like that eventually and don’t you think that is way way way more interesting than just what it is right now.
It is all there right now. That same face will not change very much.
When I was three I had my hair cut just like I have it cut right now.
So you see everything is always there.
You are still you even as you age.

There is so much beauty in the special way each of us is made up.

When my husband and I went to Paris for the first time, we stayed in a hotel in the ST. Germaine section of town. The hotel was very old and the rooms were very small. Our room was about 12 by 12 feet including he marble bathroom. We had a tiny table and a tiny bed but it was wonderful.
Even though it was small it was impeccably decorated. Every square in was charming. There was even a tiny elevator that could only hold one person and no luggage. You had to clime the stairs to get to your room.
I don’t think it would have been possible for a large person to fit in this hotel.
We had a wonderful French woman who was the maid she would bring up breakfast to us to eat at our tiny tiny desk in the morning. She loaded it up with all sorts of cheese and eggs and pastries so we carried the extra in my purse to eat for lunch. She would get to the hotel at 5 thirty in the morning(right after the streets were washed down) and start the breakfast duties. On the morning we were getting ready to leave for the south of France we were sitting in the lobby when she came to work. She made me an espresso to drink while we waited for the cab. I had not asked for one, she just made me one and I gave her a kiss. She was the most wonderful thoughtful person and although she did not speak a lick of English and my French is not that great we did communicate that morning.
I was just thinking about her this morning and how much love you can transmit with just simple acts of kindness. Especially to strangers .
Sometimes in a strange country, you don’t even know how much you need kindness until you get it.

Let me tell you about something that happens when I get to do a portrait.
When I look at someones face for a long time I start to see things that I did not see at first.
You might think how much can there be to look at. A face is not very big.
How much can there be to see.
What happens when you paint though is you have to look look look at every little thing. The slight upturn in a crinkle at the corner of an eye. The slight variation in the bow of the lip from one side to the other.
We are talking subtle things here.
But these are the little things that add up into what makes the face beautiful. And unique.

A funny things happens to me when I see the actual person I have painted in person. It is shocking. It is like I never saw them before I painted them. But now there they are in the flesh and I feel like I know know know them and nobody has ever seen them like I have.
So I feel close to that person.
I see them. Once I have seen them in this way I feel like they are mine sort of. Like we have a private bond.
And this is the unusual thing that happens.
So it is an privilege to spend time with someone in this most magical time.