Painting Is Another Way of Keeping a Diary

People sometimes ask where ideas for this blog come from.

I tell them that they arrive in a moment.

It’s like a blustery eastern wind is tossing a pile of leaves, and once they quiet, a single stunning thing lands in front. A word or image shows up on this canvas of life, accompanied by a feeling that says, “This is important.”

It could be someone says a phrase that I love.

Or I see something happen in a particular moment.

And that thing arrives as if a neon sign from the universe is pointing to it, saying “Look here.”

I’m not kidding. That’s how it feels.

For example, someone this week told me that she learned about the Queen’s passing from her Starbucks barista. She said, “There was just something wrong about that, hearing that the Queen died from someone making me coffee.”

I thought that was funny.

Charming even.

(RIP Queen Elizabeth.)

And when that happened, a string of words showed up in my head: The day the barista told me the Queen had died.

And I thought, “There’s a poem in there!”

These are the moments that reveal something is wanting to be created out of nothing.

That moment when you see a child’s red mitten sitting in a gutter by the side of the road, and it makes you sad. Why? Because you can imagine a story behind that mitten. There is a story that is begging to be told.

Many artists experience this feeling in some way.

That’s what artist’s sensibility is: That feeling of wanting to bring music to where there was silence just a moment before. Introducing color into what was white space. Taking a block of ice or sand and removing excess material until the form emerges. Stitching together a cool new handbag. Taking an extraordinary photo to capture a moment. Arranging a set of colorful pillows in the perfect way on a couch.

I believe all of us have access to an artist’s sensibility. We all notice moments that make us stop and take pause. It’s what we do with that moment that makes the difference.

I have a friend who sings opera.

He has even written a book about it.

I asked him once why he likes to sing, and he said, “I feel most whole when I am singing.”

That’s right.

I feel most whole when I am singing.

He was saying that art is not always about the end product that is created, but sometimes it’s about what has moved inside the artist.

What stirs inside of you right now?

What are you noticing in this fascinating world around you?

Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina said, “Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

What makes you feel most whole?

Gosh darn it, go do it.

Art has infinite healing properties. And wholeness beckons for a reason.

*Title after a quote by Pablo Picasso.