Saturday, January 27, 2018

The Joy of Discovery While Knowing I’ve Always Known It


This morning while journaling and writing about the progress made on my paintings yesterday, I realized something important. In one photograph, deciduous and evergreen trees were kind of mixed. I realized the deciduous have a more rounded canopy and the evergreens have pointy tops.

The little girl part of me is dancing with the excitement of discovery. This is so exciting! Why didn’t I notice this before? 

The adult logical mind brushes it off sarcastically with, “Of course, I know that about trees!” And I do know that. After all, I’m a nature-lover and I’ve been painting landscapes for years. So, how do I explain this child-like joy of discovery feeling? 

Work in process; getting the trees right is taking time
Maybe the joy is because, for some reason, the tops of those trees jumped out at me from that photo, when normally in a scene like this, I wouldn’t pay that much attention. Maybe it’s because the universe decided I needed a little child-like joy after intense stress the past few days. Maybe it’s telling me that, in this picture, I need to highlight this area as a bit of focal point. Or maybe this is, literally, an instance where my brain just acknowledged seeing “the forest through the trees.” And maybe it’s my logical mind describing in words what my eyes are seeing.

I often “just” paint the trees, especially the trees that are kind of the background landscape. My mind kind of goes numb, and I just dab away. These areas are often the parts of the painting when I say the painting paints itself. 

And maybe I can just sit back and relish in the excitement of a little-girl feeling of discovery and be happy. 




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