Painting - The Thrill of it All

Here it is 2:30 in the morning, something woke me. I have been working for days to get ready for the Ellicott City Plein Air event this weekend, July 12 thru the 14th. Come to think of it, with all the events going on, I've been at it for months, really. 8 to 12 hours a day for weeks on end, stopping only to eat, sleep or order more supplies. Being an artist is like a real job, only you don't go home at 5. You can't turn it off, and if you force yourself to turn off, sometimes it does not return for a long while.

When working on a painting, you have an idea, or a vision, and you have to chase that image, you are guided by what you have seen, and the brush moves and the colors fly onto the canvas. The image eventually reveals itself, you work on and on, through the times that it does not look so good, and near the end as you are exhausted, and start to reach that inevitable place when you think you may be finished, but are not sure. Then you realize that nothing that you are adding to the painting is making it any better looking, and most likely, even if you worked on it for weeks, it would still not be improved, you realize that you are indeed, finished.

This is the process, when an idea moves from concept to excitement, then exhilaration and finally exaltation. It is a wave of creation that builds up within you, and then crashes, and you too, crash, and wait for the next wave to come.

And in my quest for painting, I always feel like a kid on the beach with a small paper cup trying to capture it all. There just isn't enough time to paint even a small percentage of what we take for granted every day, the extraordinary beauty in all things. So get out there and paint, because nothing will give you the thrill that a completed painting will. Trust me, I have tried to find it other places, but there is nothing that compares to it.