Re-steemed...
Snow-Storm + My Painting

White powder dust slowly sifts to the ground covering the dirty concrete with a thick crust of lemon gelato ice cream. Cool and tart to the taste, refreshing on a hot summer day.
On a Toronto December afternoon, the image only makes me shiver and screw up my face with its sourness.
From my choice window seat in Starbucks, holding a blank notebook on my lap, I see a parade of once-human bundles of clothing slowly weaving their way through mounds of snow, freshly laid out on sidewalks and street. A few brave cars inch their way from west to east along Queen Street. A dog leaps in and out of the snow banks created by industrious shovels, and when he returns, a trickle of yellow forms grooves in the clean gelato.
Aretha Franklin’s rich, mellow voice croons from the speakers, as I sip my frothy latte and wonder why it is such hard work to think about plots and dialogue. Inertia grabs at my brain whenever I attempt to proceed from casual, detached observer to writer-creator. The only snippet of human life to emerge is just what is in front of my eyes; my mind remains a perfect blank. I wonder if perhaps, the fault lies in my own life, which is more observation than truly living.
The sky turns to a silvery gray and soon will again change colour to indigo, then, finally black. Cursed with being a painter, my world instead of being a moving film, consists of a sequence of still visuals.
I avoid drama and dialogue as I bump up against other life forms in my daily encounters. The sight of landscape and animals arouses my passion more then people.
I remember as a young, teenager, being passionately interested by people, observing them intently to guess their personalities, professions, and raison d’etre.
When did this change? Now, I simply don’t want to know, lower my eyes and hide. My favourite hiding place is my studio, a truly sacred space, where I feel at home communing with forces in charge of colour, canvas and secrets yet unborn.
Am I lonely? No! Oddly, practically, never…
The stories buried in my gut, dying to emerge, won’t dance across a blank page guided by my pen. They can only be told with pictures. Poised with a brush and canvas, they hurry to unfold. Fickle, the paintings tell a different story to each viewer who happens upon it. One person exclaims..”That picture is so "sad”, whereas another is delighted by its farcical expression.