Sometimes, when I meet someone I haven’t seen in a while, they will ask me if I am still painting. Often I say: “Does a bear sh*t in the woods?” It’s that natural. For me to paint, that is. I can’t imagine what else I would do with my days. It hasn’t always been easy, but persistence does help. Stubbornness.
So now that I am back in my studio, working steadily, the entire world looks different to me. Everything is filtered through the painting schedule, the painting time, painting thoughts. As usual, after a break from working, I begin thinking I don’t know what I will do when I get back into my studio, but I want it to be “different”, be something “new”, a step forward. And I am often surprised that anything new can happen after so many years of painting. But maybe because of all that time and thought, it does happen. It may not look too different, but it feels like it is and that shows up in the work, no doubt. There is still the continuum of my personal handwriting in how I move paint around, yet the work is evolving, still. And naturally.
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