Comfort on the Easel

 

Every now and then I begin to fall in love with a particular painting I am doing and a funny thing happens: I lose all perspective.  Because something about the scene affects me deeply the critical eye vanishes and I just enjoy the creation process.  This would be good except that it does not make it easy to finish the piece as one becomes relunctant to take the baby out into the world for possible judgement...and frankly, since the affair is between the artist and the art, one is rather hesitant to share it anyway.

 

This is what happened on this large piece I call "Comfort."  I just had such a good time with it that it took way longer than usual; don't know whether I was stalling as I did not know how to evaluate the piece or if perhaps I was afraid of finishing it and ending the pleasure.  No telling.  And no excuses for the many rough spots it no doubt contains but are invisible to this "mother's eye.""  It's still on the easel as I try to decide if it is really ready for the frame.

 

Comfort   36 x 24 on board

Mixed media: graphite & acrylic

 

I know these trees: they reside in western NC and I visit them on a hike that my husband and I take often....you can walk right by them on the way up and even miss them watching your feet on the trail down.  But I usually take time to pause and visit and think about all the many ways I receive, and hopefully give, comfort.  It amazes me that these huge trees are living, for the most part, on rocks and stone...somehow surviving, even thriving.  That reassuring pat or gentle touch seems to say "we're in this together, we can manage."  And I could go on about the sun spots peeking through the leaves and I could get very melodramatic and thoughtful....see? I told you I had lost all sense of reason!

 

 

OK. Enough of that, there's another easel in my studio demanding some critical evaluation and scientific analsysis....I hope you have a current favorite piece in your life, some art you enjoy just because you do.