“Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart— to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again…
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
— Mary Oliver, Upstream
My work is often born out of this struggle to give creativity its own power and time. On the other side of this struggle, when I learn to give in, my creativity can flow and the image can shine through. Mary Oliver speaks to that frustrating fact of life, giving voice to what I can only express through painting.