Girl in the Blue Turban

As I was gessoing the paper for this painting my husband said, "What are you going to paint?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," I said.

"How can you get ready to paint and not know what you are going to do," he asked.

"Well, that's just the way it is," I told him.


There is something both frustrating and magical in those moments before the pencil sketch is created and the paint is mixed. For me there is no recipe -- no tried and true habits. Each work, as so many artists know, has a life of its own. And in the doing, each painting I complete could have been several paintings if I had stopped at certain junctures. I had an art professor tell me to "stop now or the painting will become something different." He was right.

I don't stop until I have exhausted every possibility and the work itself says you're done. I'm not sure it will always be this way. When I figure out how everything works maybe it will be different.

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