We are living in a strange era, it must be admitted. This oil painting that we undertake, this very difficult craft that we practice without understanding it!

1. Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

2. Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance.

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy.

– Edgar Degas

4. I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine.

5. I am a colorist with line.

6. One sees what one wants to see. It is false, and that falsity is the foundation of art.

You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do today. Otherwise working is just a waste of time.

– Edgar Degas

8. If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.

9. People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

10. Do it again, ten times, a hundred times. Nothing in art must seem to be an accident, not even movement.

11. I should like to be famous and unknown.

Beauty is a mystery, but no one knows it anymore. The recipes, the secrets are forgotten.

– Edgar Degas

13. There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.

14. We are living in a strange era, it must be admitted. This oil painting that we undertake, this very difficult craft that we practice without understanding it!

15. One certainly needs courage if one is to approach nature.

16. New things capture your fancy and bore you by turns.

17. I am thirsting for order.

18. I have done so many of these dance examinations without having seen them that I am a little ashamed of it.

19. There is a kind of shame in being known especially by people who don’t understand you. A great reputation is therefore a kind of shame.

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

– Edgar Degas

I love this quote because it rings true for making paintings.

What you're trying to do is hook one sentence to the sentence before and the next one to that sentence. And as you do, you're building a house…. The architect and the contractor, they know what the house is going to look like when it's done — and that's the big difference. I don't have any idea what it will look like when it's done. I don't have any idea whether it will even be done, because you don't know what you're doing when you're at work.

PHILIP ROTH

Howard Ikemoto

When my daughter about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college — that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, You mean they forgot?

-Howard Ikemoto, from Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Painting

The imagery for my paintings and drawings does not come to me fully formed. I poke around terrified on the edge of the abyss and leap in scribbling and wiping it away. I am terrified because I am an astronaut without the protection of a rocket ship. The terror comes from the vulnerability I feel when being out there receiving the signals. When I am not feeling this sort of vulnerability I am usually not in a painting phase. I require this particular sort of receptivity to make paintings which is also a painful state. Perhaps this is why it's called pain-ting. So I am painting when I am most frightened of it. Does this make sense? I am always hoping to accumulate some courage along the way or lessen the fear but maybe I'm just not designed this way. I must accept my way of being; fear in one hand and trembling courage in the other.

It is all very hard for me to accept myself I guess it is my life's challenge. I have two to three month spells of terror 'receive mode' which is when I paint. Then my energy shifts to sensory and physically hyperactive 'transmit mode' and I must bake and cook and write letters and vignettes and I feel overflowing energy with accompanying joie de vivre, confidence and optimism. I keep thinking I'd probably get somewhere in life if I was just one way. Bill says that's a myth I carry and anyway it's not an option. It's not how I was made. I know he is right but I am having a very hard time letting go of my notions. My pal Susan would say What is it about this notion that am holding onto and invested in? Perhaps I am still preserving my mother's voice that said I am all wrong with bad wiring.

My painter pal Ken Maryanski said years ago Change your beliefs. I have been told all my life that my internal energies are what enable me to paint. I think of the quote by Stephen DeStaebler Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working. I am trying to convince myself and accept that this switching from internal to external is a gift and not an impediment to making work. But don't REAL artists face one muse every day? Not necessarily and many of my painter friends don't either. Maybe what I have to accept is I have two different muses one in my sensory body (love of words) and one in my haunted head (mind full of colors). I can barely use words when the paint happens and I can't paint when the words replace colors. I accept day and night and the four seasons, why can't I accept this?

In Early September when I went from sensory high energy this summer to dropping down into internal September mode I had a vivid scary dream. It was a predawn rollover dream.

I dreamed I was crouched on top of a friends refrigerator while I harpooned a big bear that was pursuing me. I apologized before skewering him a bunch of times. Then he was dead but as dream logic goes he was suddenly alive again and I finished him off with BBQ tools. Then I went around bragging that I killed a big brown bear with BBQ tools forgetting that the real work was with the harpoon.

I have been thinking about this dream for weeks. At first I just thought it was just a crazy rollover dream then I started thinking of the bear as a metaphor for my painting and how when my energy shifts I make light of the terror and the fight. I brag that I killed the bear with BBQ tools forgetting the real work is with the harpoon. Also in the dream the bear could be a stand in for my mother. She has been a big scary bear in my dreams before (and in my life) and perhaps I am still apologizing for having to kill her off to get on with my artistic life, and accept myself as I am. Another interpretation I had was I have a lot of tools and I must use them all. Another friend said that to him the dream means make do with less. I liked that too.

Season In Silence

People always ask me, "Is painting hard?" It certainly is for me. Here are a few things I try to keep in mind.

If my schedule allows, I try to paint at the same time each day. The 24-hour body clock has a good memory and sometimes my body can lead me when my mind is lagging.

I have a half dozen canvases or panels kicking around so I can switch over when I am stuck or wish to start anew.

I try not to be so fast to critique myself. I'll put the day's work aside and begin fresh the next day without looking at the previous painting. I'll let a picture season in silence for a few days or weeks out of view. My eyes and brain get a rest.

Procrastination is an inevitable part of the process. Rather than fight it, I try to make it nourishing. My psyche is often telling me it's time to "take in." I'll write in a notebook, walk the neighborhood with my painter's eyes, read poetry, sketch, play music (on an instrument), or set up a soup to simmer while I work.

Most advice for writers applies to painters. One piece of advice is to paint what you know - your shoes, your dog, the house next door, a friend wearing a hat. Writers write about their process but not many painters do. I have a library of books on writing to help me with my painting.

I resist using photographs as reference, preferring to use my own eyes, because photographs are translations. Cameras cannot see as deeply and uniquely as my own eyes can, and there is a danger that the poetry I am able to see will be missed if I rely on a photographer to "see" for me.

Habit is the muse. Just as with walking the dog, or baking bread, repeat action greases the wheels.

I never expect hours of uninterrupted concentration. Painting a picture is not the same as pouring concrete to make sidewalks, or building a deck, or fixing a car engine. I might have laser-beam focus for only 90 minute spurts, but that can add up to a finished picture over a week.

It can help to show others my works-in-progress, but I don't invite just anyone into my studio. I try to choose wisely, to protect my efforts.