Painting in Public

Old Golden. Oil on gallery-wrapped canvas, 12x12. Contact Sandy at Center Framing & Art (860-233-7804) for price and shipping information.

It's fascinating to watch people watch me paint, especially when I'm painting with a palette knife.

Even with a brush, my paintings generally look like a big, messy mess until I'm way more than half done. I tend to start with the darkest spots, then move around on the canvas, with the lazy girl's technique of applying the colors I've already mixed. Wherever the dark green should go, well, I paint there, whether "there" is attached to anything or not.

People edge around the canvas to look, and I'm pretty sure they're expecting to see a recognizable painting that's partly done, and instead, they get a canvas with a bunch of blobs of color here and there. Most of the time, the lookers sort of blanch, mutter something and walk away. If they come back later, and look at the finished painting, they're stunned.

Sometimes I need to remember that my life is an awful lot like my painting. In progress, and up close, it's sometimes a messy mess, but in the longer run, and from a distance, it has some beauty and some grace - if I remember to step back and look.

Thanks for reading!