everything does

As a painter, there are often a couple canvases that roam around the studio and are not considered finished. I haven’t put my finger on the exact problem, but I know the painting isn’t “right.”

It usually comes down to the composition needing just a bit more light. Somewhere.

At the peak of my painting productivity, when my work was creating actual cash flow and I was having to carry enough “product” with me to shows around the country —

—that little soupcon of light could make the difference in whether a piece was appealing to a lot of people, or “just a piece,” part of a series I was working on at the time.

Or, that singular piece that everyone was drawn to.

And often, it was just a matter of light.

I’m serious. A square inch of palewhiteyellow on a 5 foot by 4 foot canvas could make everyone take a second look. Think about that. A tiny bit of warm white light in a huge painting could make you feel better. About it. And maybe even about you.

I liked to think that the thousands of people who walked past my paintings and paused to look got a lift from that glance. If I hadn’t believed that, it wouldn’t have been really worth it to create a gallery on the ground under a canopy in Richardson, Texas, or Gulf Shores Alabama or Alexandria Virginia, or a hundred other chichi neighborhoods — for fifteen years. Because after awhile, I realized that was my gift from God — not just the ability to make paintings that people wanted, but the also the ministry of joy the paintings created just by people seeing and reacting to them.

I’ve never considered them “mine,” anyway. They were always from God. Even the bad ones, I suppose, because we grow in our craft, and purpose, with time.

It became a raison d’etre, to make people smile and nod and maybe even say something to a companion. Sometimes they stepped in to talk about a painting that touched something in them. What a reward that was! I had hundreds off deep philosophical discussions over the years. And many spiritual ones. When you have a mobile gallery seen by anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 people in a weekend — surrounded by other artists so good that you all met a jury criteria — you work hard for the paintings that will turn heads.

As I found my visual voice, I noticed that paintings which uplifted people had the element of light somewhere that evoked a feeling of optimism. It could be “off camera” and reflecting on the buildings, bringing a rosey glow to an entire city. It could be just a hint of a hidden sun showing up on the edge of the random cloud cluster. But a suggestion of light…

Perhaps a path through a woods, or garden or between some hills …but something that led toward the light.

Because we are heliotropes. Human beings turn to face the sun like a field of sunflowers in July. We seek the light. Even dystopian movies walk downtrodden survivors toward a dim, distant light in a crack of dark window.

It’s what we do.

And it is what I’ve been laboring over on a painting this morning: where to put that smattering of possibility on an orphan painting that’s been wandering from wall to studio and “needs light.”

I’m retired from having to create, so these “smatterings” assume more importance than they really deserve.

But we all need more light right now.

We need that suggestion of optimism. It needs to be something that all of us can see, too. Not just a glimmer of hope for some.

We all need a little light.