On one of my regular saunters with the dog there’s a ford across a creek. After heavy rain last week, half the track has been washed away and the creek has formed a rather attractive water feature. Attractive to those who don’t mind getting their feet wet.
Folks often ask me about colour choices. I don’t paint what things look like so much as how they feel, because I reckon the language of painting is capable of so much more than representation. Leave that to the camera I say! On the other hand I recently read a realist artist’s biography where they stated that they painted “truthful” colour relationships. So, by her yardstick, my paintings are all damned lies.
What is truth?
=
Note: I often use the word saunter because I love this alleged quote from John Muir (a local lad from where I grew up in Scotland) on the word hike
“I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”