The Soul's Eye

It is funny how the mind and eye work. I set out to create a painting about leaves on moss. And late last night I hated it. The colors were too Christmasy. The leaves flat and lifeless (perhaps because they were on the ground dead!).

So I scraped all of the moss away and woke up the leaves, veering from their true form to what I imagined they would be in air. I then layer in some white tones and went to sleep.

This morning I went at it again and now I have leaves as I saw them truly on my walk yesterday—floating down from the trees. The paint is thick and gooey. I seem to be moving between thick, luscious paint application to calmer, more thinly applied paint and I never seem to know which the painting will turn out to be.

Looking at the painting now, I see that it was just trying to be (and has become) what the theme in my mind is about these days. Flying.

It started with Maine and the birds there, transitioned to the painting "Learning to Fly" I am working on in Rochester. It took a side trip to explore the concept of tree of life through the small painting of the oak leaves. And now this small gem. I believe small paintings need to be gems, precious, complete. So you have it my soul told my eye what to create, damn the logical brain!