Out here, in the New Mexico country side, up above - the sky, mostly blue, and below - the river flowing into the ocean, eventually. What is above is below....
The nights are dark, filled with stars, unless a full moon lights up everything: the neighbors metal roof across the arroyo and the river below shimmering, a silver bracelet.
Yes, it gets lonely here at times, but the silence and loneliness is the key to go inside and find those images to put on canvas. Rather, I have to say they come when they want to show themselves, when they want to be seen. The process of painting for me is total surrender, all thoughts and ideas flow away with the river and something unexpected comes in instead, surprising and telling what is happening in my unconscious channel: "Where did that come from"? - it comes with the wind, I hold the brush and let the colors tell me where and what they want to be. Yes it can be unpredictable, but also exhilarating when "it works". The skill, the craft of painting is only a tool, to know how to hold the brush and to mix the color and then there is trust and thrust and lots of praying and chanting and drumming and looking up into the big sky and listening to the birds with nowhere to go but here.
Edouard Manet said: "Color is a matter of taste and sensibility, for instance, you must have something to say, otherwise good night. You are not a painter if you don't love painting more than anything else; but it's not enough to know your métier. Knowledge is all very well, but for us, you see, imagination matters more.
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My favorite spot by the river, especially lovely when the light comes low from the West and the fish are jumping.
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