Why I Paint

Painting is one of the few things that truly grounds me.

And it literally calls to me.

When I close my eyes, I see images. Sometimes they are colors, shapes, lines, or fragments of a painting I’m already working on. Last night, I kept seeing white lines, indigo, and magenta. I sometimes wish there were a way to photograph exactly what I see in my mind.

If I don’t paint for a few days, I become restless. Painting is a reset for me—a time-out from everything else. Maybe I need that more than other people do.

In some ways, it reminds me of when I was a chef.

I spent endless hours in kitchens, on my feet, often without a window in sight. Food on my apron, the aromas of the kitchen somehow becoming part of my uniform. And yet, I loved it.

I loved creating flavors with my hands—smelling, tasting, adjusting, experimenting. I used to joke that being a chef was a disease. Other chefs understood exactly what I meant. It gets into your blood—sometimes quite literally after a little overzealous chopping.

Painting feels much the same way to me.

There is something almost sacred about creating—about becoming completely absorbed in something that brings pleasure from a place deeper than conscious thought.

And just as I was a somewhat messy cook, I am definitely a somewhat messy painter. I can become so involved in what I’m doing that I don’t notice the paint on my arms, my legs, and occasionally even my face. I do wear gloves, at least.

When I apply paint to the canvas, it begins to feel like another language.

There is something I want to express, but I don’t always know what it is. Sometimes the painting seems to know before I do. There is an exchange of energy between me and the canvas—something wanting to come forward, even when I don’t completely understand it.

Sometimes other people see it before I do.

Painting, for me, is an active meditation.

When I am truly inside the process, I am completely in the present moment. The chatter in my mind disappears. Like walking in nature, I feel free.

A worry may surface. A disturbance may arise. But somewhere between choosing a color, scraping paint across the canvas, adding a line, or covering something I thought I wanted to keep, it fades away.

For those moments, there is only the painting.

Perhaps after all the spirituality books I’ve read over the years, I finally learned something.

Or maybe I knew it all along.