Overheard in the studio this weekend (also known as the tiny conversations I have with my 3 year old daughter)

My daughter gets very excited when she finds me in my "studio" aka my bedroom, painting. She usually asks if she can help and I have a hard time explaining to her why she can't help with my landscapes. Luckily I can divert her interest into a shared painting project where she paints/draws near me.  So while we were working on our artwork, she asks me "why do you paint".  Funny thing was that I had just written a whole page on it as a writing assignment care of Blacksburg Belle.  As she is three, I decided to just simply say "because I love to". Hopefully when she is older I'll be able to explain it to her more.  

Since you're not three, here's why I paint:

I paint landscapes because I believe we live in a culture where we are so removed from nature, removed from ourselves that we have become stressed out by it.  I believe we have started a journey where we are almost literally attached at the hip to modern machines and we almost feel lost without them.

I believe that landscapes with wide opens skies have helped me relax and reconnect and I know in my heart that others who see them may do the same. And that hopefully they will, in turn, put down their latest phone/pad and go out and enjoy nature.


I love painting because I love getting lost in the canvas. I love how time slips by. I love the challenge every painting brings. And I especially love how scared I am of the whole path that my landscapes may bring yet I still charge forward.
 

After our hard work, we decided to put them up together for a critique.  She had decided that since I was working in greens, she wanted to draw a house in all green.