How a Burning World Became Summer Rain
This is the story of Summer Rain and how a burning world became sunlight through raindrops and the smell of damp earth.
Sometimes I know what I want to paint but often I’m a blank slate when I start. Either way, whatever I intend or start with, inevitably changes. At some point I move into a flow that takes charge. When a painting is done, I look back and mostly don’t really understand how I created what I see. As a result, it is challenging to explain my process to people.
I always do an underpainting. It lays the groundwork for the layers of expression to come. When Summer Rain was an underpainting and had no title, my husband checked it out one morning. He returned from my studio to say he thought it was the best painting I had ever done.
“It is perfect” he said…”don’t touch it anymore”
“It is perfect” he said…”don’t touch it anymore”…he said he saw the earth on fire. “But it isn’t done” I replied. “Don’t do any more” he insisted. “It’s perfect.”
I was deeply troubled by what he saw in my work. I could not accept the energy expression of the earth on fire, even knowing it was, in fact, happening all over the world. Best work or not, I was compelled to change the painting. My visual statement needed to be a healing one. I worked on it more. It lost its coherence and, at some point, I realized I might have to give up…that the painting was nearing death, lost in confusing sentiments.
The medium of oils requires breaks between painting. At times that is frustrating and other times the enforced distance enlightens creativity. During this break, waiting for paint layers to dry, I began to feel the energy of rain…muting the fires, reflecting the sun, flames and sky, offering solace and beauty in place of a ravaged earth. And Summer Rain emerged.
That is the story of Summer Rain and how a burning world became sunlight through raindrops and the smell of damp earth.
Some people are uncomfortable that my paintings rarely show a clear focal point or have an easily understood composition. But that obscurity is the nature of energy flow, which has many pathways and outcomes and owes no allegiance to logic or expectations. And energy is what I paint.
Nevertheless, if you look carefully you can see the signs of ground vegetation across the base of the painting, the sun source in the upper right corner, and the sheets, drips and droplets of rain embracing all life on earth.
Summer Rain, 40 x 30 x 2 inches, oil on gesso board