ARTresa

Why I like to Paint...

Sometimes when I am in the middle of a painting I like, I will be unable to sleep till it is done and I will be up into the wee hours of the morning painting, painting, painting until I am too tired to see anymore and I begin to nod off in front of my easel.

If I live to be a hundred, it will never be enough time to learn all I want to know about shape, line and color. It is the thing I love most in life and I am privileged to have the chance to make money doing it. It teaches you something new all the time; it teaches you new ways of seeing yourself and the world you live in. That is what art does; it teaches you to see.The painter's job is to see and feel the subject. If you work hard, for a time you become the subject, and the best work comes from that place in you.

Visual language is like verbal language; every nuance, every detail means something. Painting is as deliberate an act of communication as writing or speaking. Each painting you see is a documentation of self expression - whether it is a landscape, a still life or a portrait, it is telling the viewer something.

It is an acknowledgement of visual and emotional intuition between an artist and the subject and ultimately, the viewer. It is helping the viewer to see the subject in a new way, to step outside him/herself and look through the eyes of another. It is about sharing and expressing through craftsmanship, skill and the physical manifestation of an internal vision.

It enables you to say to anyone in the world, no matter who they are, what language they speak, or how different they are from you, "Hey,come here, look at this. What do you think, what do you feel when you see this? What does this bring up in you?" Through an image, one soul has extended an invitation to another without a single word being spoken aloud.

And that is what makes it worthwhile, to share and discover your own world , and then see it through the eyes of another, and then watch as they discover the world within them.