Seeing

I can’t see my finished artwork before I start it, just like I can’t see my finished life before I live it.

I often have a pretty good idea what it will look like, but that is only if things go to plan. I can stick with a plan, and paint a forest scene or whatever is in my mind, but I can also change my mind along the way. I might say I’m going to walk to town, and then see an inviting trail along a creek, and change my direction.

One time, I was all set to go to college in Arkansas, and then one day I suddenly changed my mind and went to one in Michigan. I already had my dorm assignment, and some of my friends were going, but they went without me.

Plans change for a variety of reasons. Something compelling and unexpected might lure me. I get caught in the gravitational pull of something else.

Maybe I just change my mind because plan A wasn’t working out.

Most things can be undone.

I do a lot of things, and many of them are creative. That doing inspires me. If I grab hold of that moving paintbrush, the inspiration is just there. The images trickle down my arm and onto the paper or canvas. If there is not a picture in the queue, then any brushstroke can inspire the next one. Sometimes I ask a brushstroke to look like a walrus, sometimes I don’t ask it to look like anything but a brushstroke.

I put messages in my work. Sometimes the message is “this is a painting.”

I have many themes that recur in my art. I reiterate them, but each time, they come out differently. I change from one project to the next. No two sunsets, no two bonfires, snowflakes, roses or paintings are exactly alike.

The messages are sometimes clear, and sometimes cryptic. I’ve been staring at an abstract painting that hangs next to my bed, and I keep seeing more and more in it.

Seeing is a process that I can’t rush.

I fall asleep in one painting, and wake up in another, even though the colors and shapes have not changed.

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