To Paint is To Love Again

Early Mondrian

I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful — an endless prospect of magic and wonder.

~ Ansel Adams

“A picture is a poem without words” — Horace

“Painting is self discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.” — Jackson Pollock

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” — Picasso

When I left France and got poor, I stopped painting. That was five years ago. Only now do I feel stable enough to start making art again, probably modest things with modest means, but art all the same. Exciting.

I learn something by stopping for the first time in fifty years. I learned that making art keeps me healthy, it keeps me in balance. It comforts me and releases inner tensions. It resolves personal contradictions and gives my life a sense of meaning and coherence nothing else can.

It’s therapeutic and soul satisfying to create art, but also to simply have a piece or two on the walls. I see them like soul mirrors. I can’t view them in the same way anyone else does. They bring revelations. They bring memories. I recall my struggles with certain ones. Others came with ease from a place in me I didn’t know existed. They put out an energy that I am pleased to know exists in me.