"Paintings With Personality"

Here is a quick sketch of a few huts along the Amazon River

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page" - Saint Augustine of Hippo

 Thank you for joining me after a month away. I began my blogging break with some serious and much needed painting time. Then Honey and I left for two and a half weeks in Peru where we enjoyed marvelous food and visited all three of the country’s beautiful areas.

We began our journey in the coastal region of Lima where we enjoyed some of their famous cuisine. From there we went to the Andes Mountain region, including Machu Picchu (the ghost city of the Inca Indians) and Lake Titicaca (where native people live on floating islands made of reeds). We spent a week traveling around the Andes, getting to an altitude of 14,500 feet before heading for an Amazon River cruise. On the Amazon River we visited native villages and went on forays through the jungle. Honey fished and caught several Piranhas, then sold his fishing pole to a native. All in all we had an incredible time, loving all the new sights, sounds, and experiences.

Travel can be life altering. Not everyone can go to distant, exotic places but a road trip or just a day trip will open our eyes a little wider and gives us more to think about. It is particularly important that artists travel. The world is a beautiful place and it is impossible for the painter to create with passion or excitement if they stay in the same place day after day. The experience of seeing different places, meeting other people, and eating new food opens up a whole world of possibilities for the artist. A painter has to look with all their senses, not just with their eyes, to find the extraordinary. It is the painters’ job to create something never before seen by anyone, and copying another person’s photograph is not being creative.

No one can experience life if they can’t forget their fears, forsake their comfort zones and try new things. In the United States you may be able to experience a different culture by going next door or perhaps across town. Take the plunge, get up and get out, learn and grow from the contact, it will do wonders for your creativity. You’ll return from your time away with a fresh new outlook. You will be newly inspired and anxious to get back to the studio to try the wonderful new ideas you came up with while enjoying the new and different experiences.

To feel excitement about your work and to love what you are doing is fundamental to making good art. When the painter doesn’t see with all their senses and feel what they see, they might create a good design or prove they have technical ability but they won’t move their viewers in any way because they haven’t been moved themselves. The artist must know how they feel about a place and choose color, shapes, textures, and values that will depict those feelings. Only then will the viewers be drawn in to share in both the technical and emotional aspects of a work of art.

 “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

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