The last couple of weeks have been way too busy. Work stuff. Stuff with my dad, who continues to fail healthwise. Cleaning out my parent’s house. Church stuff. Other personal things that sucked up time and energy. My hours have been weird. Meals were irregular. I’ve been in too many cities in too few a days.

My whole schedule has been out of whack.

Because of the travel, I’ve rarely had time to write in the mornings, which is when i write best. I’ve barely had time to do my bible reading and meditation. And I haven’t painted in two weeks other than some really failed experiments last Sunday. Nothing’s been done as well as it should be because I’ve rushed through the weeks trying to get everything done. And frankly, I don’t do so well when I am out of my creative schedule.

Today I was home. I did all the put-off errands. Unpacked yet another truck load of things from my parents’ house, and found places for most of it, made a circuit of visiting friends and reconnecting myself to this place I love, and this afternoon, took some time in the studio.

I was so rusty. Oh man! I ruined a lot of perfectly innocent paper with bad art. It’s like the eye goes stale without use. That probably makes a lot of people laugh, since I paint mostly abstract paintings, and many people;s impression of abstract is that it’s just willy-nilly slapping and splattering of paint and how in the world could you go wrong.

I totally sympathize with that point of view, since I held it for a long time, when I just did pen and ink, all very representational, and so detailed. I didn’t so much disdain abstract art as I just ignored it.

Until I started painting. Then, to my surprise and chagrin, it was the abstract that sang to me. It felt like poetry in color, line and space, not detailed, not succinct, yet somehow capturing a truth, a feeling, an emotion, an idea.

Color was the big step. I used to be a little afraid of color. My daughter, who understands color and uses it with abandon, was always trying to get me out of my grey and while world. White shirts. Grey slacks. White walls. Pen and ink drawings on them. That was my world. I actually took up painting more to get past my fear of color than to become an artist in another medium.

And it has worked. There’s color in my paintings, of course. But come visit my house and you will see walls painted warm yellows, vibrant reds, gold, Green. Some white still, but slowly being replaced with color. There are colorful things on my walls. Heck, I even wear colorful clothes now and then.

Color and line, and making it sing to people, and to myself, has not come easy. I am still learning, even as I paint more and sell paintings. And I’ve learned that it is indeed possible to mess up an abstract painting. I can be happily painting away, and a single brush stroke gone awry and suddenly the painting is …. wrong.

It used to be that I could not tell you why. But with years behind me now, I can tell you why. And I can tell you whether it’s fixable (in oil it often is, less so in watercolor), or trash.

Today, after a couple of weeks away. I created a lot of trash. But that is what you have to do when you have been away from anything, plow through the flotsam and jetsam, to get your eye back, to get your hands working under your control again, to learn again how to see.

The painting above is the one, called A Beautiful Discord, is the one where my imagination, heart, hand and eye finally came together again. And the joy in that! Oh my, you can’t imagine. Will anyone else like it? I have no idea. But it brought me joy, a joy that came from once again being able to take the different elements of a painting and bring them under my control, to create what I envisioned.

The day is complete, and so I am. At least for today. And that is enough.

Be well. Travel Wisely,

Tom