My mother delighted in reminiscing about how passive I was as a child, pointing with enigmatic pride to the times when my two older sisters could con me out of my coloring book by swapping for a sheet of paper. Little did she know how pleased I always was with the exchange. A blank piece of paper thrills me even now. To sit and stare at it and dream of turning nothing into something, a line here a splash of color there, the void filled with words perhaps but always filled with something beautiful and perfect for the moment. And then … the transformation done, the moments inspiration gone … Voila! My work of art … something to be thrown away and hopefully forgotten. Still I'm compelled to try.

Ironic isn't it that painting for me is an escape from reality and yet the end results are almost always realistic? As I put paint to brush and brush to canvas a sense of peace overwhelms me. There is no preconceived vision of what the end results should be to guide me, no intellectual message to convey, no emotions begging to be expressed; just complete concentration on light and shadow and shape and form until eventually stepping back to see I marvel at what my hand has done. For that one moment in time the subject I've been painting does not matter. I simply enjoy the soft, flowing, feminine feel of what I've done thus far and see something of myself in its subtle complexity and depth. That moment disappears and suddenly I find I'm laughing at myself and the sentimental nonsense conjured by my mind.

Having begun my painting hobby using food coloring, shoe polish, and q-tips it is impossible to take the hobby seriously. I'd sketch with black, or brown, or cordovan adding color here and there then overlay a wash of white to blend them on the paper. Not once did it occur to me that I might mix the media before applying. I had after all grown up with crayons. Now I wish I'd saved a sample of those first feeble efforts, but they were tossed aside, thrown out when, having depleted my supply of household products, I splurged on a tin of Prang water colors. Oh how I missed the white as I struggled with applying layers of color then washing them away trying to blend and highlight, strengthen and soften until finally, taking pity on me and my soggy sheets of paper, my husband gave me oil paints for my birthday. I promptly fell in love with him again and with his gift of vibrant colors and the sensual flow of oil from brush to canvas. This I could control.

And so began my on and off relationship with brush and paint and canvas and a would-be artist's life of small successes. Of course since then I've had a little training:

That was the last art class I enrolled in. I was, after all, retired. I didn't want a new profession. But being a Libra and easily influenced I found myself painting portraits on commission. It started with giving one away and continued with occasional requests from someone who had seen a portrait I did for a friend or family member and been inspired to want one too. For me commission work was perfect. It forced me to actually apply paint to the canvas instead of simply staring at its whiteness contemplating the millions of paintings that could be created. And it is so much easier to please someone else than it is to please myself.

Thus I dedicate my work to all those wonderful someones whose enjoyment of my paintings keeps reminding me that the value of art is not in the hands or heart or mind of the artist but in the eyes of the beholder.