In the Discretion of Inspiration

It's been a long time since I last painted, about a year and a half. Why did I give it up? I think I sacrificed my art for a relationship where it may have been problematic but now I realize not painting was the real problem. Still struggling with issues of creativity, in other words.

I don't mind the painting, quite like its bright colours, find the women a bit detached from one another, but then they are separate poses by the same model over the course of a few hours one evening at a lifedrawing session. If I did them again, I'd like to paint them with the wings of angels... and, who knows, may.

I realized that the figures have composed themselves into pairs - the two on the far right I don't particularly like - the colouring is too thick, but then again they're more earthy than the others, more ripely body, hence more sensual. The central two I rather like, somehow reminding me of the centuries of art looking out at me, it's hard to explain; one looks straight at us, I left the features of her face deliberately delicate, not forceful lines, and the other I happily left with her head in the clouds, almost sculptural, and she's quite androgynous too, sort of like 'The Thinker.' On the left are figures growing out of the swell of sky and earth, colours themselves. They remind me a little of Michelangelo's 'Slaves' who are both emerging from and yet still part of the marble, but my figures are free and lithesome, like flowers dancing in the breeze. There is one rising like a vivid plume, too, who echoes the far right one with the walking stick, herself a figure, in my mind, of the Australian walk-about medicine woman of earthy potent power, bald perhaps from illness she's gone through, but she's there, an onlooker, a protector, one who cares for the soul. All the figures are sensual to my eye. They blossomed on the page like flowers in a wild garden, nature spirits, fertile with the creativity of nature and spirit.

This little painting comes out of the womb of life, the women who are like flowers in the garden we all play in through our years of living.

Overall I'm pleased with this renewed effort to paint again. I have already bought a sheet of paper for the next one...

This is how to do it - to continually have something 'on the go,' bit by bit things get done, you just have to keep dabbling, keep reaching in, taking a moment here and there to add a line of paint, or a phrase, or a little prose poem, and then you find you have a book, or a set of paintings to show.

Inspiration is in the moment, in discreet, distilled moments of time.

I happily share my journey with you.