A summer painting on a winter day

Today I gathered my golden tints, naples yellow, and sap green and attempted to paint a summer day. I loaded my pallet with all the hues of summer. I was in a painting support group. The three of us supported each other's decision to paint on this winter day.

The lighting was great in my friend's kitchen. We sat up our easels and clutched our brushes. It was time to begin summer. I tried not to look outside the window and view the snow fields of diamond dust. I was quite slow at beginning. I had not painted since fall and had lost my "knowing" . I was face to face with the canvas and the canvas was winning. It was a wrestling match of a sort. I painted a soft green field enclosed by mountains in a distance. At least in my mind that is what I was painting. The brush seemed to go its own direction , and I had about as much paint on me as the canvas.

As I begin a painting, it is always humbling. I realize what a challenge and how difficult creating really is. There are so many decisions, fine motor skills, and the need of a creative nudge to birth a painting. I have observed how easy it looks when I am standing in a gallary. I admire the strokes, the color combinations, and the style of another painter. What I forget is how much planning, design, composition, and thought is behind that landscape. Most of all , I realize it takes time. There is a time to learn, a time to practice, a time to paint out and a time to paint in.

To every painter there is a season.

I am seeking my season. Other painters and friends encourage me. They use their "art eye" to help me make another stroke, another pattern, another developed area. Suddenly, today I realized why I enjoy this art form so much. It relaxes me as well as challenges me. It frustrates me as well as pleases me. It takes me out of my comfort zone and into an art zone of new discoveries and demands.

Painting is not about creating a calendar likeness. It is not even creating a scene as I photographed it. It is instead knowing that my Creator is within me . He has graciously given me the gift to create. Only for a glimpse can I understand His masterful hand in creating the heavens, the planes, the roaring sea. I am addressing angles at rest and then shifting forms, shadows, and lines. Painting gives me a oneness with my Creator. It is only then that I can paint a summer day in winter in the small Eden of this afternoon.