Sorolla's Garden o/c 22x28

I had hoped to post some new paintings by now, and I had not planned to post any older paintings. This one was done last year, and the only reason I put it here now is that it was just juried into the current show at the Art League Gallery in Old Town and hung on its own wall, which was a salve to my bruised painting ego.

I signed up for a painting class in Easton Maryland with Louis Escobedo, a fine painter whose work I noticed in the American Art Review. Yesterday was the second of four weekly classes, and for the second time I drove ninety miles to Easton and ninety miles back and in a full day of painting didn't manage to do anything but mess up a perfectly good canvas. It's like I have never painted before. I found myself rushing to put something down, and Louis kept saying "make bold strokes." "Think before you make a mark." "Every brush stroke should have a purpose." I heard all that the first week and didn't pay much attention. We were doing a still life and I kept saying to myself that somehow still lifes must be different from landscapes.

This week we worked from a model, and again, it was as if I had never done this, and this week I heard him saying, "slow down." "Think about what you're doing." And he didn't actually say it, but he was telling me to be more deliberate, to plan and make choices about color and such before touching the brush to the canvass. I realized as I was driving home that I don't approach much of anything in life that way. I just kind of jump in and hope for the best.

Then today, I was interviewing candidates and postulants for ordination with the Committee on Priesthood. We met with a couple of very bright rising stars in the process, and one of them talked about the spiritual work of listening and paying attention to what is being invited in relationships with parishioners. He used the words, "Learning to see." He said that had been an important learning for him in the process so far. (I was sketching one of the other members of the committee at the time, and wondering if I would ever learn to see colors well enough to commit boldly to laying them on the canvas, when those words hit me.) This seminarian called me back to the truth that learning to see is a process that takes time and commitment.

I was planing to launch another blog where I spent time with the spiritual implications of learning to paint, but today, there is no separating one discussion or practice from the other. Maybe there is a whole other discussion to be entered into about why one day I paint with confidence and another I paint tentative little strokes designed to do no harm that end up portraying nothing.

Easton again next week. Who knows?