The picture above is one of several paintings I recently finished, titled “The Perfect Green.” I am a long time pen, ink and pencil artist who in the last year, with a fair amount of trepidation, has stepped into painting, falling in love with watercolor.

Painting for me has become like poetry, a way to create a mood, a feeling, and emotion with color instead of words. And oddly, since my pen and ink and pencil drawings are extremely detailed, my water colors are abstract, capturing mood more than objects.

Painting is new to me, but it’s just another form of expression. Another way to say something about the state of my soul, the state of my heart. Everything I use, words, images, paint – they are all imperfect expressions of things that often, I can’t express as well in every day life.

At times that imperfection frustrates me. I might paint three pictures to get one that is close to what I want, or take dozens of photographs to capture something, or write version after version and never quite say something perfectly.

But I have come realize that is part of it, the imperfection. That is part of the art, if you will – the ability to capture something powerful, if imperfect, because that is what our feelings are – powerful and imperfect.

And every once in a while, I get close. And someone is touched. And in that moment, it’s not just art.

It’s magic.

Tom

PS: If you like what you see, I recently posted an on-line gallery of recent paintings that you can find here on the Quarry House web site. I also have a gallery showing winding down at North Main Gallery in Salem, NY. You can find those paintings here.