These days I find myself talking to myself more and more often. Little comments on daily life, things, possibilities. How someone ahead of me is driving, the quality of the garlic I just bought, why the deer are eating my lilies. I can tell myself what I really think I think and what I think I feel. And no one is there to contradict me, to feel hurt if they think I’ve crossed a line. I can be “honest” with me. Or, rather, I try.
There is, actually, no such thing as complete honesty or, at the very least, it’s very difficult to achieve. It’s all relative: relative to how aware you are, relative to the circumstances and to time and place. People are variable, have various sensitivities, needs and intelligences.
Honesty in painting is the most important quality. I usually call it integrity. Not posing, not posturing, just being. Possibly it’s the painting talking to itself with me as the interloper.
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