I have paint envy. I want to paint, I just can’t. It may have something to do with some graffiti trouble in my past, but I am guessing it is more about technique or skill. I can doodle, draw, do graphic arts type stuff on the computer, etc… But I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to put something on a piece of canvas. I spend a lot of time sitting there with a paintbrush, paint, and a blank canvastrying to paint something as simple as this...

I assume the bridge between painting, and what I do, is gapped by the actual act of putting paint on a paint brush. I am also pretty sure that by using the brush, with paint applied, to transfer paint to the canvas, is the next step. Got it.

I now have a white canvas and a blob of paint that may or may not be a snail. It really depends on how you squint at it. You know, to make your vision blurry. If you don’t squint, you are just happy it doesn’t smell as bad as it looks.

Maybe if I move it around a little. That should hel…… hmm, I have a larger snail. Great. Let’s try some blue instead. Oh yes… much better. Are those flies?

As I watch this process unfold, I am thinking about great artists and their works of art. You have Gustav Klimt with his amazing “The Kiss” or Alphonse Mucha and his wonderful pieces like the seasons series, one of my faves. While the two people were different in style, they both had an amazing ability to project what they wanted you to see. When they painted you were left seeing something.

Even Picasso and his very odd style was understandable. You could see something in his artwork. Frida & Diego Rivera (what a lovely couple) were very capable of allowing you to see what they wanted from their artwork.

Politics, love, anger, jealousy, hate, or frustration, it all appears in artwork. Your emotions, my emotions, are all a part of this artwork. Yet here I am with a pile of crap on a white background, but if you squint, it MIGHT look like a snail.

So, while being followed around goodwill, I looked at the “dropped off” artwork around the bins and there were original pieces by real people. I could see the brush strokes by Jonie Vanderhaul, from when she painted the picture of a barn in some field. Unfortunately, when she gave this “to my friend Edna”, Edna decided to donate it to Goodwill, lest it clutter her guest bedroom wall, where she has that picture of a sunset she cut out of an old calendar and framed with a recycled frame from her 1st wedding. I can just see her saying, “oh thank you it’s lovely”, when she received it from Jonie during a Tupperware party. Now it sits lonely, in a bin full of Angels smoking cigarettes and what I think is promotional poster for the new Marlboro Reds. Either that or we have Russians in our midst. Mental note taken.

While I am almost positive that Jonie is not famous for paintings, I am positive that she meant to paint a barn in a field, not a bunch of sunflowers. It isn’t like she started and her flowers looked more like a barn, so she adapted.

So why is it that I sit here in my ‘studio’ with 4 paint brushes covered in various mixtures of colors and no matter what I do, I end up with something that looks like a pile of scat in a field of snow? I think it is because nobody ever sat down with me and said, “hey, nice snail!” I could be wrong.

So what I am left with is the realization that painting may not be my surprise ability I did not know I had. While I continue to try, if you know anyone that is interested in a snail shaped pile of crap in a field of fresh snow, I know where you can get one. I also have a picture of 8 tulips by Jonie, I think…..