05 Jun There is no life without color!
I am painting much better than a few weeks ago when I spent most the time scraping back down to surface at the end of each day. I was trying to paint the lava flow of 100 square miles, 40 feet deep, from Malpais, ‘(badlands),’ of my recent visit to New Mexico: the painting began with a myriad of grays from black to white, but I could not hack that, (I, the colorist). I am surrounded by emerald green mountains and hummingbirds back here in lush New England. I have birdsongs and wind and now the sound of rain from which to paint. (My friends in New Mexico told me that when they visited New England, they were blinded by all the green). I had no idea what I was painting for days, (I, who don’t want to waste an ounce of paint)! but alas, in retrospect, I go through this each and every beginning of a painting. As an abstract painter, there is nothing in front of me from which to work. I have to pull ideas out from nothing, but in the end, one always senses landscape anyhow, and I have no idea how I ever got there for the painting yet to come. I love and crave the solitude, from where imagination comes. Giacometti stated that at the end of each day he destroyed all that he did that day and began anew the next day, day after day like that. Only an outsider would say, “oh, that is too bad,” but another artist would know what it takes to ‘get it going.’ Once Brahms was asked how he had spent the day. He responded: “I was working on my symphony,” In the morning I added an eighth note. In the afternoon I took it out.” A month out in the barn painting like this, the painting is “Sweet Rosy Peonies,” filled with seasonal colors, as I now face the beginning of a new painting all over again.