A Work in Progress

 Cows on South Freeport Road, Maine, 2012, oil on canvas, 20" x 24"

I paint. I don't make money at it, since very few people see my work, thus very few people buy it. Nevertheless I paint, and I have no idea why.

About once every six or eight weeks I drive into Portland and go to the art store and buy blank canvases and more paint and new brushes and thinners and glazes and brush cleaners, and then I go home and cover the canvases with the paint. I have no idea why I do this, but I'm not alone: Artists have been around since the caveman days. They are hardly ever respected unless they earn a lot of money through their art, and then they become Gods and their work is considered to be good and important and meaningful. As usual, money is king. (Why is that?)

The walls of our home are covered with art--some of it my own work, others by friends and many by strangers. It just hangs there, doing nothing. I can't eat it or sleep on it or keep warm from it, but I need it anyway--not sure for what. Not everyone feels this way. Years ago I gave a gift of a painting to my friend Carol. She took it graciously, then said, "I'm not sure what to do with this; we don't have art." It was true; looking around her house, I saw for the first time that the only things on the walls were a calendar and many framed photographs of her and her husband and their two sons. In fact, their bedroom was a sort of shrine to the boys as babies, despite them both now being in their 20s.

Shown above is a painting I am working on right now. It's got a ways to go, but I think when it's done it will be quite a lot of fun to look at.