Clutch

I started a new composition. Sorry Stacy, yours is in my field of view still, just not on the easel. I am in a mild crisis however, so if there are extenuating circumstances, these are they.

How could I ever not do this? By that, I mean paint. I think I imagined last night, for the first time, not having access to [painting/creative endeavors] and it depressed me on a fundamental level. Not because it was sad or because I would not be able to do something that made me happy. It wouldn't be that simple. The depressing insinuation has everything to do with imagining forfeiting who I have always been, who I am today, and whom I always thought I would be.

This new painting, though in the initial stages, shows me painting will never go away. If I were to give all of this up to make those around me more happy I would only accomplish the opposite by becoming a negative force in their lives. If I had to be someone else out of capitulation, what good is that for anyone? What does that teach? What lesson is that? I know. It is a lesson on how not to live. It would be a lesson in failure and regret and forfeiture. Noble lessons some may say(the French?), but I say that those lessons come along the way regardless, in moments of thinness and moments of cowardice or self doubt.

Painting should be thick, brave, and confident. A painting should not be just a picture, it should be an idea. It should be a journey, an exploration, and an experiment. It should be something unresolved in the beginning. It should be a trial and a discovery and something worked out, like life. These criteria should make this new composition interesting.

I am a painter because I am not otherwise.