Blog

I decided that -- since I have no training in the arts other than the couple of brief museum classes -- it might be useful to say something about how I got this far.

I painted all my life, now and again, because of the peace it gave me, but I never got any encouragement.  I did paintings for some of my class projects in high school, and I painted a very little in our so called art class in high school.  But it was as though I wasn't supposed to be the one doing it.  I almost failed Latin because I painted a Roman lady and the teacher didn't believe I'd painted it.

When I no longer had the pressure of producing something for class, I was too busy working.  Occasionally, I would start something, it would look terrible, I'd get frustrated, and it would go by the wayside.

When I painfully decided to shell out about $200 for a painting "boot camp" with Kira at Cameron Art Museum, I was really intimidated.  I was so afraid my canvas was going to be blank at the end of class that I thought I better do something.  Just try!  And it was three hours long, five weekdays in a row; feeling stupid just sitting there, I pushed on.  We painted a couple of still lifes, the first of which was a slice of cantaloupe.  There was a moment when I felt I had leapt off a cliff, so to speak:  my cantaloupe was all one very nice orange color but it looked like a piece of paper.  Despite my attempt at a shadow.  I just took another color and swept it along the cut edge and suddenly, it almost scared me.  It sprang to 3D life.

What I discovered was that the only reason I couldn't paint is that I wasn't painting!