settled

In a Q&A I am often asked about the places I paint.  I describe them as places I visit frequently, places that are already there on my path that I'd be traveling along anyway, regardless of my watercolor ambitions.  I try to be honest at the risk of sounding uncolorful, undescriptive, unimpassioned.  I know painters who choose to not even show up at Q&A's, out of protest perhaps, and I understand this decision.  

Is painting the only way I know how to express myself?  Do words not come easily?  Are colors my only voice?  No, quite the opposite:  I strive to make colors a mode of expression. I wasn't born as I am now, stubborn and mute.  It's a protesting of my own easy way out, of resorting to explanations.

Is this a watercolor or a painted photograph?  How do I see this?  Why paint this image, this photograph, in watercolor or oil at all?  What does watercolor lend to the photograph?  Why was the photograph not better left alone?  Why don't I paint more people, people with ice cream cones?

If there has been a theme over the past year it is NYC.  But from that point on I disintegrate.  The paintings are based on photos from NYC's various parts, not just Manhattan or midtown or any one thing that is collectively agreed upon as NYC.  

I ask myself what I'd want on my wall.  Do I want to collect images of antlered animals?  Do I have a preference for paintings that only describe aspects of my hometown, as I currently am or am not in my hometown yet want to be reminded of it for sake of my own identity?  

Or, what's my relation to sadness and do I wish to stomp it out or do I wish to know it?