 |
| Shady Pond 9x12 Oil Available |
In a previous post, I wrote that painting is the way I "digest the world." To clarify, painting helps me observe and also sometimes understand the physical world. There's more than a little bit of the scientist in me, and through painting I may learn something about botany, ornithology, geology, meteorology and a few other -ologies. For example, while painting a spruce along the edge of a bog, I may note that one branch goes off in an odd direction, and so I deduce it's because it had to grow around another branch that is now missing. This and other observations provide clues to the tree's life story.
But interestingly, the things I observe and learn about may not be the things I paint.
Painting is a holistic enterprise, so while making my study of a spruce, I am also paying peripheral attention to everything else. I follow the buzz of an insect, and I find it drowning in the "pitcher" of a pitcher plant. A chickadee sings in my spruce—will it miss this one insect? No, because I spy wrigglers—mosquito larvae—in the red, tannin-rich water of the bog, and soon there will be plenty of mosquitoes for it to harvest. And in fact, a rainbow-colored sundog, pinned to a ceiling of high, wispy clouds, foretells of rain and even more mosquitoes.
Painting also helps me understand the metaphysical world. More about that later.
