It is a curious experience to come face to face with oneself, painting by instinct in a dimly lit studio, the scent of oil paint thick in the air, as the hours blur by. Not simply coming face to face with one’s own portrait, created by one’s hand, but also coming to terms with the essence of oneself placed stroke by stroke on canvas.

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            It was late at night, where I, sequestered in my studio, picked up a large blank canvas and placed it on the easel. I moved with deliberate slowness, filled equally with exhilaration and dread, ready to start this painting that had been calling to me for weeks. I had wired a mirror to the wall at an angle facing me, with a light glaring up into my eyes, lighting up my reflection in a series of strange shadows and shapes. Reaching to the side, I dipped my brush into globs of oil paint barely seen in the half-light, streaking the color across the canvas, at first hesitantly, then vigorously and with more confidence. A new work had begun, born of a burning need to create a work fully my own; each decision based on intuition, each stroke of paint existing because I willed it.

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            The struggle of painting comes from understanding each painting individually, letting each part speak to you as you simultaneously force it into existence. Beginning a painting when that first blot of color stains the pristine canvas, is the most difficult step, and finishing the painting by deciding which stroke is the last, is equally difficult. Every experience is different, and every painting becomes a living thing, capable of pulling raw emotion from your very soul, leaving you equally full and empty, satisfied yet craving more.

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            Being able to touch the unexplainable and feel the sublime through the act of painting keeps me going back to the canvas. Most of us have felt it and experienced it differently, through a strain of music, the smell of summer rain, or the voice of a loved one. For me, the euphoria of being in a dance with brush and mind, canvas and body, the intense rush of raw feeling, the tingle of awe racing down my spine, that is what brings me back to making art over and over again. It is not about the finished piece, it is about the experience. Artwork can have a price, but the true art, the experience, is priceless.

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             –Rebecca G. Dolan