Rain Coming, Mansfield Depot

 Rain Coming, Mansfield Depot

Plein air painting, oil on canvas
sold

I was bumping around the Connecticut countryside on Saturday, (visiting the homes of buyers to sign paintings that I'd neglected to sign when I finished them!) when I heard a snatch of a conversation on the radio.

It was a talk by writer Elizabeth Gilbert, about the creative process (you can hear the whole thing by clicking here and then going to her TED talk, at the bottom of the page). She was talking about  Tom Waits, who was driving when whatever you want to name the force that sends creative impulses to us began showing up with a song.

Waits looked for pen and paper or something, anything to help him get the ideas down. Finding nothing, he looked up to the sky and said, basically, "Can you not see that I am driving here? Would you please wait for a little while so that I can capture this thing you're sending me?"

My art has come through a combination of chance, and inspiration and blessing - and my willingness to be open to it. I often feel that I am a faucet of sorts - that the painting is flowing through me, and it is my job to develop the skills to turn that flow into something. And when this is happening, the world simply goes away. I paint, and an hour or two later, I open my eyes - my outer eyes - and there is the world I'm living in, and there is my painting.

Those are the best times, and they are the best paintings. The gift came to me, and I had a paintbrush in my hand and a canvas in front of me.

Mansfield Depot