Beautiful Monday: Why I Paint

Each Monday I will be exploring issues of Beauty. This is an area of great interest to me. Beauty is much more than the superficial and glamorous. It is, among other things, the goodness in creation that surprises with the gifts of joy, tranquility, excitement and even sadness.

My painting is very much about beauty and the process of slowing down life and allowing beauty to engage my inner world, and I hope the world of those people who see my work.

I truly love the subject matter I choose - whether still life, figurative, landscape or flower paintings - but I have found that the fundamental reason I paint is that it forces me to slow down and really gaze at an object to discover the beauty that lies both on its surface and deeper in my soul. The following excerpt from John O'Donohue's wonderful book "Beauty: The Invisible Embrace" helps explain what I mean:

"Each person is the sole inhabitant of their own inner world. Each of us is responsible of how we see, and how we see determines what we see. Seeing is not merely a physical act: the heart of vision is shaped by the state of soul. When the soul is alive to beauty, we begin to see life in a fresh and vital way."