Painting is such an absorbing pastime. You mix the colors, add the oil to some, wet the brushes with oil, and begin… Begin if you have the vision inside and know exactly where you are going with the brush tip. Sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch and bothersome to envision and create but once the juices start flowing, it’s a wonderful feeling of enough and completion in another world where time does not exist and the beauty and calm taking over my physical body is amazing.

Of course the beauty of peace is inside, the humming and relaxation of your mind at ease and pleasure. There is nothing in the world that can compete with this feeling.

The Monday after January 1 is always a productive calming time for my spirit. I have experience a month of tension, preparation, cooking, partying, talking, socializing, etc., etc., etc., and have gone to bed each night thinking and planning and blueprinting my January. As Morpheus drags me into the night during December, I find myself idly considering what I have been painting on over the last months, thinking of changes I want to make to give them depth and complexity and my mind is overflowing with ideas for new paintings I want to begin. I wrestle with issues of visual complexity and problems I have encountered in my painting. I internally critique the paintings I have been working on before my Holiday Break, my “ah ha” moments of enlightenment. And by January 1st I am more than ready to withdraw from sociability for the near future and drown myself in paint and canvases in the studio.

Unfortunately, the last week or so with this horrid flu have made sociability almost impossible. And of course one of the reasons I am particularly anxious for the new year to begin… Honestly, is to feel better: I have to feel better by then!