I have goals as an artist. I want to purge the restless searching that comes to me. That part is therapeutic—selfish—and keeps me sane.
That would be enough reason for me or anyone else to make shapes and colors on a canvas.
It's not enough for me.
I spend hours making scribbles on paper that make sense to someone else—not everybody, just people other than myself. I piece bits together slowly and painfully until they feel like the things I'm catching a glimpse of in my stomach.
What color is a scream?
Hunting in circles around the canvas for the edge of something that stings or sings. I see something, leaning against my drawing table and staring at the mess of marks and colors on the canvas on my easel. I take four steps forward; it's gone. I step back and fold my arms against me. I look, waiting, squinting, tilting my head from side to side. Picking up a red oil pastel, I move forward again; no, it's gone, that glimmer of a shape; I can't find it. I put the oil stick down.
I do a crazy shuffle dance back and forth in a space of eight feet in front of my easel. Some days, I'm more lurching and shifting about than painting. I spend chunks of my life at the altar of my easel, making sense of things I don't have words for with pigment.
