Redtree Times

Still affected by a lingering cold, I was struggling this morning to write about the new painting above, an 18″ by 18″ canvas titled Worldshaker.  I went back in the archives of the blog to look for inspiration and came across a term– native voice— I had used a few years back in a blog entry.

This particular blog entry used a Picasso quote– It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child — to describe my own decision years before to not follow tradition in my painting.  Instead I would try to paint in a way that would be as natural to me as breathing so that whatever came from my efforts would automatically have my idiosyncrasies and my fingerprints built into them as well as the unaffected honesty of a child’s vision.

Looking around the studio now at the canvasses, some finished and some in various states of progress,  that lean against any available wall space I can see that native voice very plainly.  Looking from piece to piece, I can see that each is very much imbued with my own voice, plain and simple.  No attempts to be anything other than what they are: a testament to one person’s existence.

And maybe that’s where this painting and its message enters the conversation.  Perhaps we all have the chance to shake the world in some way, even if only a small way,  if we can all dare to speak honestly with our own voice.  We think of change as a great sea tide but it often begins as a ripple of a thought uttered by a lone voice.

Let it be your voice.  Shake the world.