When the Canvas Calls
I don't always have a painting in progress.
Sometimes my easels stand empty for weeks. Other times, two or three canvases seem to call at once.
I have learned not to paint simply because there is an easel waiting. I wait until there is something worth answering.
My art journals and smashbooks are different. I return to their pages almost every day. They are intimate places of exploration—places that continually show me who I am.
Painting asks me to show who I am.
Perhaps that is why I approach the canvas with both longing and hesitation.
Painting feels expansive to me. It carries me beyond the protected pages of a journal and onto a surface that cannot simply be closed when I am finished.
A painting turns outward. It occupies space. It allows someone else to stand before it, look into it, and encounter something I have chosen to reveal.
There is vulnerability in that.
And still, when the calling comes, I answer.
Wander slowly.
Look closely.
These are some of the answers.
Certain things find their way into my paintings again and again.
Flowers.
Faces.
Spirals.
Pattern.
Feminine forms.
Bits of paper and unexpected marks.
Sometimes I choose them deliberately.
Sometimes I don't realize they have returned until the painting is nearly finished.
Over the years, I've come to recognize them as part of my own visual language.
But I don't need them to mean the same thing every time—and I certainly don't need them to mean the same thing to you.
One of the things I love about putting a painting into the world is that eventually it stops belonging only to the person who made it.
You bring something to it, too.
So I won't tell you what to see.
I'd rather give you room to look.