Seeing Through Artist's Eyes

16"x 20" Green Orchard, Oil on Canvas

I'm over half a century old, and I've been making art of some kind or other for most of that time. Yes, there have been times when I did not make art; that comparison of how a practicing artists looks around her to, well, how a non-practicing artist looks around her. In those times when I have been regularly drawing, painting, collaging, everything I look at is seen as colors, textures, patterns; I'm thinking of how to get that effect, how to express that moment.

The feeling comes first: wordless, eyes widen, breathless. Then comes the smile, a feeling of great satisfaction, wonder. Next, the translation begins, as I described above. It's not even done in words. It's more of a wordless thought process. For me, it is connected to, flows from, my beingness. I'm being myself, an artist; I'm doing what I do, seeing and changing it, one foot in this shared world and one foot in my own, personal world; How can I bring this world into that world? How do I share this?

This painting is a window into that early morning, patterned colorful world of my childhood.

"If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul." Paul Cezanne