I’m back to painting after a hiatus of about five weeks, one of the longest periods I’ve went without lifting a brush in the past fifteen years. I really felt it was necessary at this point to just step back and take a pause. Take a deep breath and let things build back up inside.
The last few days I’ve been working on a new piece that is a continuation of the Red Roof series. It felt pretty odd, at first, to step before the easel again after such a long period. In fact, I kept delaying it for the days before I finally started. There was a slight fear that it would be a struggle to find anything there and it was easy to let myself be distracted by any and everything.
But I was finally there. I had a knot in my gut and was really unsure but, as I do with the Red Roof pieces, I started with a block of color in the bottom left corner and suddenly the anxiety began to lift. This first block started a chain of actions that began to spread, even before I painted them, across the canvas. All the distractions receded to a point far in the distance and I was completely in the moment there in front of the easel.
Man, it felt good. Felt right.
There are still distractions that pull time away from this feeling. It still is going to take several days to be in full rhythm which is, as I’ve described before, a very important aspect in my process. The rhythm I’m talking of involves total immersion in the surface, free of all distraction. Every action is effortless and immediate. There’s a freeing of something in the mind that allows color and form to flow easily out.
That’s still some time away but that first hour or so with the brush in hand let me know it was there to be attained.
It felt good.
Redtree Times 