Tuscan Series

Quattrocento #2

Oil/Cold Wax

8x8x2 

Some people never know the profound pleasure

 of the work for its own sake. They work only to live. 

Alex Castro to Anne Truitt: Daybook

The pure pleasure, we artists are fortunate enough to experience, losing ourselves in the action and activity of "the making".

Currently I am swimming in the indulgence of color. The Tuscan Series is focused on my memories of Italy and the soft, golden suns and walls, sienna and dove grey foundations; textures and colors fashioned through the erosion of time, visible in the ancient architecture, are like decadent, dark chocolate for my mind. 

The sensuous pleasure I experience mixing hues together, as my eyes and then my mind, coalesce into a sacred ecstasy as new colors appear under the magic wand of the palette knife.

This joy - it comes from the work. I am daily grateful that I am in a time and place where I can indulge myself in this practice. 

And yet it's not entirely an indulgence. It's a very strong yet flexible thread to my survival. It gives my life purpose.