Serious

Serious

Oil on canvas, 12x12, $350

I painted this yellow lab during the day on Monday, the final day of the Paradise City Art Festival. It is always a crapshoot, painting in public, but I like it.

I'm not a careful, deliberate painter. I mean, I think about my paintings, sometimes for quite a while before I start, and when I am painting, I consider each stroke - but for moments, not for hours or days. When I do get going, I paint quickly and with very little thought. For me, this is where a lot of the mystery resides: It is not my conscious self, choosing that color, deciding on that line. At the very best of times, it is something ethereal, a higher power, something simply outside myself. My physical self vanishes, I become a vessel. I paint, I look up, two hours are gone.

Doing this in public can be a little disconcerting. People stop me, talk, look - and that's part of it. I'm learning to get back into the zone in and around the interruptions. I did it pretty well with this painting, which is even more stern (and funny) in real life than in this image.

Heather and I leave in less than a week for Canada! We will be driving up the northern rim of the Gaspe Peninsula, then around its rim and south. Depending on weather and time, we'll head into New Brunswick, then maybe to Prince Edward Island, and maybe even Nova Scotia. Click here to get to a map of the area and see where we'll be driving and painting. I intend to post my paintings and our story, whenever possible!