I've been reading "Joan Eardley" by Christopher Andreae. The portrait he portrays is of someone with whom, I feel, I could have been easy life-long friends.

Painting is a way of being brought closer to this reality:

"We define (and so come to feel) the individual in the light of our narrowed "spotlight" consciousness which largely ignores the field or environment in which he is found…”

From an interview with Patrick Graham (Irish Arts Review, Winter 1987)

Do you enjoy the process of painting?

"Painting, for me, is an exhausting business... “

Sharing an audio file, a “morning talk” from Timothy Hawkesworth, Palace of the Heart (Part 1 of 2)

William L. Lathrop regarding a show at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1906: "A big portrait by Sargent. Two portrait heads by Abbott Thayer. The Sargent is a wonderfully brilliant performance. But one finds a greater earnestness in the Thayers.

The dark hours before dawn and catching the first light of the day is a favorite time for me. Waking up several hours before needing to head off to work has been a routine for the past 15-plus years, since the boys were little.

Maybe it's not only freedom we seek. It seems there's a concurrent search for belonging that has little to do with a conventional sense of familiarity and much more to do with discovery and surprise.

(a few beautiful lines from Rilke…)

I don't always know what to paint. Sometimes I have too many ideas, too many paintings I want to paint, and it's hard to know where to even begin. Today, as most days, the world came at me in one stunning visual moment after another. It can be overwhelming.

Today will be remembered for snow. I'm not sure what the final accumulation will be. We're currently somewhere around 20", and it's still coming down.

(sharing a recent complete commission…)

“I did and do believe, after all that I've seen and done, that if you project yourself into the mass of things, if you look for things, if you search, you will, by the very act of searching, make something that would not otherwise have happened…”

This idea of freedom, freedom from self, it's a recurring theme lately. Here's Guston…

It was a little hot to be out in the sun in the middle of the day, the only time I could sneak away today. Luckily, I found another great (maybe even very near perfect) place to spend a few hours.

“Pare down to the essence, but don't remove the poetry.”
― Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers