Goodness, beauty, and truth. What else is there to live a good life? Make your heart your art. So when I think about art, the miniscule, small moments of life feel very important. This describes clearly, at least to me, the meaning of art. It used to bother me that I saw a subject to be painted everywhere. It was a look in a person’s eye, the beauty of a flower, the landscape as one drives along a familiar road. It used to bother me that I would have all these unfinished canvases in my head zigzagging around, never to be started. But I have learned to work in themes of portraits, landscapes, still life, and series of studies. I can almost say that I need only to make a list of work to be done and thus relax and continue to paint. In my style of painting, there are layers upon layers, both in paint and meaning. When I feel compelled to create a painting it is often based on intuition. While I am doing the paintings of people, I resolve some of my understandings of these relationships. Looking at “Christmas ’70”, I see how young and naive we were. We wanted to understand everything. The same is true in “Christmas ’71”, but we were comfortable with ourselves and posed with our family of cats. I plan to continue doing these Christmas paintings. Art is easy for me. Relationships are difficult.
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