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In the Spring of 1970 my art teacher, Peter Nyren, took us all out behind the school into the woods to draw. He did this several times that Spring. I'm sure he must have been breaking some rule having us out of the building, but being out there with my peers, sitting under the trees in a blanket of Lilies of the Valley in bloom all around us, felt like being in the waiting room for the adulthood that we were all about to embark on. I still remember looking at everyone else and wondering if they felt it, too... that we were outside of the boundaries of the building and preparing to leave that part of our lives... our childhood... behind. Such a simple thing... sitting and drawing the woods. I don't think those woods are even there anymore as buildings have popped up in the intervening years. The city grew up around it and we grew beyond it.

Ever see one of those nature documentaries where thousands of Wildebeest are all lined up along a river they MUST cross, that also happens to be teaming with crocodiles... they know they have to do it, but that first step, putting that first hoof in the water, is filled with anxiety for them to the point where they are frozen by it. Well, that's how I approach painting. I HAVE to do it... it's a compulsion... but sometimes even after I'm all set up and ready to go, picking up that brush and applying the first swoosh of color fills me with anxiety charged procrastination... Once I start, though, I'm like the Wildebeest... going like crazy to get to the other side without something eating me!

I go through spells of not painting, but they never last long. I'm actually feeling very motivated to paint despite the funky winter doldrums. I believe in painting even if you're not feeling "inspired". The work will flow once you start moving the paint around, and even if you don't like what you're making, it sets you up for the next thing you may love. I'm working on new stuff, and also reworking some older stuff that I had thought was done, but with what I've learned since, I know could be better.

You know, I see other painter's work all the time and I say to myself, I wish I painted like that. But, even when I try to paint "like that" it ends up just being the way I always paint and nothing like what I was trying to attempt, which is someone else's style. I think I've finally figured out I am me and they are them and there's room for all of us.

When I was 17, a senior at Waltham High School, in the Boston area (1969) I took classes on Saturdays at Mass College of Art, and after class, a few of us would bop around Boston on one adventure or another. One particular Saturday, we went to the Museum of Fine Arts where, among many other offerings, they had an exhibit of Monet's hay stacks. Remember, this was 1969.... no ropes, no guards, nobody to say STOP THAT... my little mouth was hanging open, eyes wide in awe... and being the tactile person that I was then and still am today, I walked up to one of those wonderful framed studies and ran my fingers lightly over the canvas.... felt the brush strokes... imagined Monet standing in that field, observing the sky... chasing the light. I can’t even say I made a conscious decision to do this. It just sort of happened in the natural way anyone might bury their nose in a flower to take in the scent without giving that almost instinctive need to experience something overwhelmingly beautiful with their own senses a second thought. That one moment changed everything for me, and to this day, I can't see a Monet painting and not be inspired to make my own art. I can still feel those brush strokes under my fingertips... it gives me the most delicious shiver....

While I continue to adore this painting I'm currently making, this morning, whilst drinking my coffee, it tapped me on the shoulder and, with very carefully chosen words (it must know how I've been known to react when Jim points out a problem I may not have noticed) it said to me, "Um.... these people you've added? Great job, truly, but.... you think maybe they might be just a little too small for the proportions of the rest of it?". With knitted brow, I looked again, with fresh, caffeinated eyes, and I had to grudgingly admit that it had a valid point. So, today I must bring these little people into the big world.