As I progress as a painter, I have learned to paint less of what I see in front of me, and more of what I see in my imagination.
Being able to create things that do not exist in the real world brings with it the freedom to bring into existence that which is only imagined, and the enjoyment of discovery made along the way. At the same time, the creation of something out of nothing, or rather, out of your imagination, carries a certain amount of pain in the uncertainty of not knowing precisely where you are going and how something will turn out. In this way, all purely creative endeavors encapsulate the beauty and poignancy of life itself. Life would be torturous if we knew what every day would bring, when our last day would be, and what our life would look like at the end. We don’t know, and that is what allows for the pleasure of discovery, for the slow unfurling of our days, years, and lives with all of the difficulties and pain, but also with the sweetness of finding love and beauty along the way.
I have come to see that this difficulty and uncertainty is part of what makes my life as an artist pleasurable.
I have just completed a landscape such as this, a rendering of a scene almost entirely borne of my imagination. I used a photo I took on vacation in Turks and Caicos as a jumping off point, but there have been many design decisions to make and blanks to fill in. The painting sat idle for many months. I spent many hours looking at it, trying to figure out at various stages of completion what should go here, what should go there. How would the light from the sun and sky fall on the scene? I worked and reworked areas along the way. Throughout the process I experienced the exquisite pleasure and pain of uncertainty in painting something that I could not see, except in my mind.
I’m the type of person who constantly wonders, why am I doing this? What’s the point? There are many answers to this, but one of them is, I do it because it is hard, and it is the struggle that makes it so worthwhile.
What do you both struggle with and find pleasure in? Hit reply and let me know.