Month: September 2011

Invisible young artist

My sister posted this picture of us on the book of faces this morning. I don’t remember ever seeing it. While it must be over forty years old, I don’t remember when it was taken. Mom was definitely pretty. My younger sisters were definitely cute. As I look at it now though, I am struck by something…nobody would have recognized the invisible artist in the photo. There she is though; the little red-haired girl on the far right. I’d always thought folks were deliberately ignoring my dream to be an artist—as if they thought I couldn’t possibly have it. But no, it just didn’t show.

The Beginning Again (in progress) 46 x 60 oil on canvas; born 12.21.11

I knew she was supposed to be here. it just took me a long time to figure out how to get her in. Now, I can go on.

“From the moment at which a painter begins to strike figures of color upon a surface he must become acutely sensitive to the feel, the textures, the light, the relationships which arise before him. At one point he will mold the material according to an intention. At another he may yield intention—perhaps his whole concept—to emerging forms, to new implications within the painted surface. Idea itself—ideas, many ideas move back and forth across his mind as a constant traffic, dominated perhaps by larger currents and directions, by what he wants to think. Thus idea rises to the surface, grows, changes as a painting grows and develops. So one must say that painting is both creative and responsive. It is an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form.” —Ben Shahn, Biography of a Painting