Into the studio with a steaming mocha, I set it aside to cool and began to unframed an old painting to reuse the frame. Lifting the mat, I was surprised to see the border of red paper from my pastel-on-colored-paper period. When I turned the painting upside down, I didn’t have an aha! moment as with a painting last month but since the mocha was still too hot to drink, I decided to play with the painting for a while.



I rubbed out the pastel and began applying the colors left from my last painting, still on my easel waiting to be cleaned. The large area of white in the middle suggested the reflection of a sky in water. A half hour later I have a freeing, spontaneous experiment and another cup of mocha gone cold.


This has been a good week of painting. As the weather warms for yard work and other commitments come up on the calendar, I may not have another week like this for a while. But, I will keep in mind a comment by author John Grisham about being a writer. Something about if you don’t do a page a day, forget about being a writer and do something else. This week, I’ve applied that advice to being an artist and it was good.