I enjoy beginning a painting by splashing clear colors on heavy white paper. As the colors assume form, ideas for content occur to me. Sometimes these ideas seem irreconcilable, like the curves of a show-quality Afghan hound appearing on the same page as frosty ball shapes. This juxtaposition resolved into “Hot Afternoon Dog Show,” with the viewers holding ice cream cones. Frequently something funny happens, like a “bite” out of an ice cream cone in the foreground to allow the dog’s muzzle to be visible in the middle ground.
I began another painting by combining images of round suspended shapes: gorgeous colorful light fixtures and white purple martin houses. The painting became “Sunset Globes,” with the bird houses bathed in sunset colors corresponding to the pinks and golds of the lamps.
A real pleasure in “painting-by-discovery” is drawing upon what I bring to the process. Living in Germany and West Africa, cooking, vast reading, gardening and nature, moral issues, being married and not married, being a mother, teaching, accidents of light and gifts of insight, all flow through my brush and give me ideas for pictures. I proceed with curiosity from one part of the work to the next, like following clues in a treasure hunt. I hope that viewers find something in my paintings to treasure.
