Why do I paint?
I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything in three months. I will fill in the gap at some point but right now I want to post somthing that I have been working on and struggling with somewhat. Defining myself as an artist. Why do I *need* to paint, why do I paint what I paint? With abstract art I think it is an even more slippery issue…here is some of what I have come up with so far. I’m pretty sure it will be an ongoing process (like most of them are).
Okay, so it’s time to “dig deeper”. Why do I paint? Why do I paint what I paint? I am answering these questions in the wrong order but here goes anyway. Well…I love geometric forms when used in an artistic contrast…quilts for example, knitting patterns that include cabling and geometrics. I love pies and cakes…I mean homemade ones that are culinary art, recipes passed down with love from gramma’s and great aunts that make your taste buds do the happy dance from the symphony of flavors and textures. I love raindrops leaving Doppler patterns and leaves with their tiny intricate vein systems that seem random at a glance but aren’t. I love moody, dark clouds that dance over the fluffy, light ones; like a dark curtain that when lifted, show their light all the more.
I love nature. I love the swirl of the nautilus and the mottled, deep grooved strength of hard wood tree bark. The precious gems from the earth (talking about all rocks not just the ones people typically think of) all their vibrant colors and translucency that glows in the light of the sun. I could go on and on but I think we both get the idea here.
Why do I paint? When I was younger (and angrier) I would have said “So that I don’t kill people”. Now, I would say that it is a meditation, the way I touch the infinite, the way I commune with the spiritual inside me. It is also so that I don’t kill people, still, but only in the most distant sense. It brings me peace and reminds me that if I can be a jerk and still make beautiful things, then that beauty lives in all of us jerks, somewhere. It helps combat my cynicism. It gives my inner child permission to play and still love the world and see the beauty, as opposed to watching the news and wanting to shoot myself and other people, not necessarily in that order.
As you can read I am a smart aleck, not truly a homicidal maniac. But the reasons still stand really. Sometimes I lose faith, sometimes life makes so little sense to me that I feel like I don’t want to be here another moment. Then I paint and painting connects me to the things that are inside me that matter. It reminds me that life is worth living and that there is still beauty. I am not saying my paintings are necessarily beautiful, but painting reminds me of the things that I do think are beautiful 
And that is why I must paint…
