Drawn to Paint

“Will I ever be able to paint like you do?” a woman asked me, “You make it look so easy!”

“Of course!” I responded enthusiastically. Positive thinking is very important, right? But the question hung in the air, or rather, in the scrambled chasm of my brain afterwards.

I wondered, was she willing to invest 20-plus years of painting in every spare minute she had? Could she give up TV time, computer time, and lunch with friends, to stay in the studio and paint? How about choosing art magazines over romance novels? What about placing her precious work in front of people and taking the criticism (yikes), then continuing to paint in spite of it? How about when galleries refuse her labor of love? And the clincher:  Painting again after creating a string of really horrible paintings?

It’s not magic, this creation of well-received artwork. It may…