Love, love, love.
In addition to painting, I love reading and growing plants. I used to read a lot when I was young. My backup career ideas as a teen were Library Science and English Literature. Like some of you may have, I quit reading fiction when I got BUSY. A few years ago, my mom gave me a hardcover copy of “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith (who also wrote the original 101 Dalmatians story and hit plays for the London stage), and I got re-hooked!
I like romantic stories and classics and some poetry, and that overflows into my painting life and always has. One important piece of being an artist is BEING an artist; that is living life as a story. The things I can control-doing my best to make them beautiful- and the things I can’t control- doing my best to make the most good out of them.
I’ve always loved reading artist’s biographies and journals. I’m fascinated by the connections between what they painted with how they lived. The more I know of their lives, the more emotion I pull from the work. If I have a real life encounter with an exhibition of paintings by Manet or Cezanne, for example, I am powerfully moved-even if their work hadn't been of noted interest to me before. There is something about connecting the story of their lives with their original work that I find so moving.
I do a lot of thinking about "why buy art? Why watch art? Why make it?"
There is much I could say about this topic and I’m interested in what you have to say about it, and today I’ll just share this thought: Art and the making of it and the living of it is part of a story, the story of the maker and the story of the person who collects it. At that point our stories meet and mingle. The art expresses something of the buyer’s taste and experience that the painter shares with them. The artist’s accomplishments become part of the collector’s personal story. I LOVE this tapestry. Story is so beautifully human.
