I’d like to leave today
so I don’t have to look again
at all the places that I couldn’t paint.
Color’s my obsession, joy and torment
all day long.
It hunts me like a constant worry,
even in my sleep.
But I’m surrounded here
by everything I love.
I still have so much fire in me,
so many plans.
I’m setting to
just like a fighting cock.
I want to paint the way a bird sings.
Or how clear water waves
with grasses at the bottom
and the dome of Heaven
watches from the shadows.
The subject matter is the light.
How it runs out is simply terrifying.
When it is dark,
it seems to me that I am dying.
I still don’t know
where I will sleep tonight.
But I intend to battle on,
scrape off and start again.
Advice? Paint what you really see,
not what you think you ought to see.
Don’t try to understand.
Use love.
From the words of Claude Monet
Linda Frye Burnham, October 2011
