About fifteen years ago, I was a painter.  I lived in the Northwest at that time and made semiabstract paintings which I sold to, mostly, a limited number of collectors that I knew.  I never sold enough work to live on my painting alone, so I always had one or two part-time jobs with which to pay the rent and feed myself.  Later, I would meet the love of my life and eventually move east, to North Carolina, where we have made our home.  And by then, I had transitioned from painting to writing as my creative work.  But I still love painting.

I think I may try painting again.  When I began writing seriously, trying to develop book-length fiction, I didn’t have room for painting.  Writing took all of my creative energy and time; it still takes a lot.  However, writing now has become a bit more natural for me where I am better able to pick up the story cold and reenter it without as much mental work as it used to take.  And I would approach painting differently now.  Now, I would think of it more as a hobby—an exploration into learning new techniques, though there is plenty of that in professional work as well.  But I would paint small things, now, for my own amusement, not for exhibition.

I want to paint apples, fruit in general, still lifes.  I want to work more on composition, the formal elements of shape, value, and space.  I’ve been looking at Russian paintings—landscapes mostly—and find them wonderful in the way they capture mood.  But I’m intrigued by fruit—apples in particular.  I like the mottling  of their hues, their spots, their indecisive color schemes, and their sheens.  Maybe, this urge to paint again springs from a desire to create a biopic portrait because, perhaps, I am really an apple.