After a painful divorce, I fell into a serious episode of depression and chronic anxiety. As a result, I didn’t paint or draw for over seven years.
With urging from friends I found myself in a personal development seminar in San Francisco. Here, I met an author suffering from writer’s block. We could relate.
One week later, back home in Ohio, a good friend urged me to pick up my paintbrush again. She had encouraged me before, but I always resisted.
After graduating from a prestigious five-year fine art program I just couldn’t just embrace painting as a weekend hobby and I couldn’t conceive of how to make it work professionally.
My friend and I strolled into an art gallery on her local quaint town square. An amazing landscape painting stopped us. It was filled with atmospheric afternoon coastal light. My eyes welled with tears. I looked over at my friend and she was tearing up too.
We left and gathered ourselves on a park bench outside in the town square. I couldn’t ignore my heart-felt response to the painting. So I asked my friend to go to with me to the gardens near the art museum and to get the watercolor set she had stashed in her truck so I could paint.
Just after the very moment I decided to paint for the first time in over seven years, I glanced up. I was stunned. Only ten feet in front of me stood the very same writer, whom I had met at the seminar in San Francisco.
What were the random chances we’d meet again, just one week and 2000 miles later? I knew the meeting was anything but random. I felt like I had been struck by lightening.
We were both startled. I greeted him and asked, “Do you still have writer’s block? ”He told me, “Yes I do.” It was at that very moment that I had an instantaneous flash of understanding. As he walked away I realized that he was choosing not to write … just as I had chosen not to paint. It was a matter of choice … and I could change it.
More than seven years of inertia melted away and I began to paint again with a new resolve and pleasure. I painted “Opening” above. In many ways it was my first painting.
For the longest time I tacked this quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to the wall of of wherever I worked, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
“Opening” is the first of a series of new Exclusive Edition Prints that collectors may acquire here.
My First Painting
1
After a painful divorce, I fell into a serious episode of depression and chronic anxiety. As a result, I didn’t paint or draw for over seven years.
With urging from friends I found myself in a personal development seminar in San Francisco. Here, I met an author suffering from writer’s block. We could relate.
One week later, back home in Ohio, a good friend urged me to pick up my paintbrush again. She had encouraged me before, but I always resisted.
After graduating from a prestigious five-year fine art program I just couldn’t just embrace painting as a weekend hobby and I couldn’t conceive of how to make it work professionally.
My friend and I strolled into an art gallery on her local quaint town square. An amazing landscape painting stopped us. It was filled with atmospheric afternoon coastal light. My eyes welled with tears. I looked over at my friend and she was tearing up too.
We left and gathered ourselves on a park bench outside in the town square. I couldn’t ignore my heart-felt response to the painting. So I asked my friend to go to with me to the gardens near the art museum and to get the watercolor set she had stashed in her truck so I could paint.
Just after the very moment I decided to paint for the first time in over seven years, I glanced up. I was stunned. Only ten feet in front of me stood the very same writer, whom I had met at the seminar in San Francisco.
What were the random chances we’d meet again, just one week and 2000 miles later? I knew the meeting was anything but random. I felt like I had been struck by lightening.
We were both startled. I greeted him and asked, “Do you still have writer’s block? ”He told me, “Yes I do.” It was at that very moment that I had an instantaneous flash of understanding. As he walked away I realized that he was choosing not to write … just as I had chosen not to paint. It was a matter of choice … and I could change it.
More than seven years of inertia melted away and I began to paint again with a new resolve and pleasure. I painted “Opening” above. In many ways it was my first painting.
For the longest time I tacked this quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to the wall of of wherever I worked, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
“Opening” is the first of a series of new Exclusive Edition Prints that collectors may acquire here.
