I am asked all the time about making art. Questions most often posed to me center around process, materials, where I get my ideas or inspiration, how long a painting took to paint, and what does it feel like to be talented or creative…

Recently I read an interesting quote that I felt really defined the creative process. It was written by Gordon Atkins, the Canadian architect, who had a very illustrious career, and it went something like this: “I don’t think we create. I think we interpret, and I think our interpretations are the result of all the visual and actual experiences we go through.”

This seems to me to be a very accurate definition of what happens when we paint, or draw, or sculpt…we are the storytellers of our generation. We make real and tangible our thoughts, our visceral interactions, our actual fleeting moments of understanding the world around us, and our reactions to the landscapes of our literal environments.

When I moved up to the top of a mountain, my perspective changed in more than one way…it was not only because my altitude was altered. It was not only because the city stretched to the ocean and the ocean to the islands…it was not only because the moving sky was alive, and like a symphony of tremendous grandeur and changeability.

It was because I saw, for the first time, that I was a very small particle in the scheme of life, and that my talent lay in my ability to watch, to compare the days and seasons, and to make the colours of the forest, sea, sky and garden surrounding me, a story of living alone in this kaleidoscope of wonder.

Woven through this thread of light and darkness were the memories I had of my past, and the myriad experiences of decades of relationships. And most sadly, the profound losses of people I loved. I often thought of my family members who had left this world, and no longer had the opportunity to feast their eyes upon the beauty of the garden, or the belvedere.

There were friends who passed away before their time…far too early, and far too young. They inspired me to paint the wild gardens of my discontent, and my anger…an anger directed at the unfairness of their lives cut short. Their laughter still echoes in my mind, and these paintings bore witness to the questions I asked myself every day, as I struggled to comprehend where my friends were now. One day it just came to me…they were right here with me, in these paintings.

Painting reaffirms, for me, the truth in one thing: that I am alive, and present, and able to make some sense of the chaos in the world. When I pick up the brush, or pour the paint, or collage the real flowers from my garden onto the canvas, I realize the power we have to make some statement about life. As an artist I will have the freedom, and the power, to express not only the outer landscape surrounding me, but the inner rivers of commentary that run, restless, passionate, fast, furious, and some days contentedly, through the pathways of my ever-questioning mind.

As we grow older, we hope to leave a part of ourselves behind in this world. Through our interactions, our deeds, our love of family, children, grandchildren, friends and people we meet, even briefly, we all attempt to be remembered. I consider making art the definitive memory maker. Centuries after I depart from this visceral world, my art will still be a testament that I was here now.