Lemon

8/26: Lemon, oil on canvas panel, approx. 4x6 in. SOLD

I mixed a really great brown here, sort of like coffee, I think made of transp. oxide red (which I just learned about from Terry Miura's work), burnt umber and black, with ocher in the lighter parts. Wasn't exactly keeping track though, so I'll have to mix it again.

Learning is hard; learning anything - painting, a foreign language - is a neverending process. I can picture it as like going on a long religious pilgrimage, of the kind where you go on your knees, or crawling backwards perhaps. You don't mind the undertaking so far because your heart is in it, but there comes a point when you are resting at a high place and you see for the first time the small town that is your destination. You glimpse in the distance its old towers and steeples and even faintly hear the bell ring in its main square. Your heart is glad and you wonder how long, before you've crossed those hills and valleys still lying in your way. Or maybe what you see is only the next village on the path, as the next local person you greet may surely tell you. And as you rest, other pilgrims slowly and tiredly make their way past you, some younger, some older, some of whom must have traveled farther distances or have even made the trip before, and you marvel at the strength of each one. Yet you are all the same despite your different experiences, as you remember that it's the journey that is meaningful.