ABSTRACT
Painting was my first passion. When I received a set of oil paints in adolescence, I fell in love with the smell, the rich texture, the brilliant and varied colors, and the freedom—compared with watercolors, which require a commitment that cannot be undone, oils are most forgiving. Unlike many of the artists I write about in this book, I rarely use painting to express my inner world; I prefer the aesthetic challenge and the control of recreating the image before my eyes as skillfully as I can. Yet what is internal and uniquely me somehow always gets expressed—in the strokes, in the nuances of color, in the choices made with every dip of the brush. I have always found it fascinating to note how unique each painting is when a group of individuals are at their easels looking at the same still life or model. Each finished product has the indelible stamp of the individual artist, regardless of the subject matter, the technique, or the particular painting that she happens to be working on. Like a signature is unique to the signer, so a work of art is unique to its creator. Even if we’ve not seen a particular van Gogh work before, we usually recognize it as a van Gogh when we see the brush strokes, the vibrant colors, and the composition. The self has a way of emerging without conscious intention; it is inevitably expressed in whatever we create.
