Tonight's painting was all about figuring it out for ourselves. Given certain guidelines (mountain, sky, field), and a limited palette, create an abstraction of a landscape that focuses on the relationships between the colors and values in a way that creates a balanced representation of your image. Tonight was not about creating a beautiful painting (although everyone ended up with a lovely piece), it was about the beauty of the struggle. I'm not sure that it is ever possible to love every aspect of a finished painting, but if we open our eyes to the little bits of amazing that happen when we let them, then no painting is without merit. Embrace the struggle and the process and the materials and the act of creating, and just paint. Paint not to create a masterpiece, but paint to experience the little joys along the way. I hope all of you manage to find your Zen in painting. It doesn't happen every time, but if you stop worrying about the end product and just paint for the experience, you'll find yourself wrapped up in your work and oblivious to the rest of the world. If you pop up from your painting and have no idea how much time has passed while you were working, odds are you found your Zen. That's a good painting...no matter what it looks like!
You can't win if you don't play!
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