Who are you when you paint?

The serious model
18 x 24 inches
acrylic on canvas
Barbara Muir 2010

I thought of this question this morning getting ready
to go to work, and was both surprised and delighted
that an unusually deep thought had flitted through
my otherwise dependably shallow brain. In Europe
at the Florence Biennale there was a lot of talk about
meaning, and I was at pains to invent some serious
meaning to give myself depth and cred (credibility --
very in word with the younger set).

But I think in spirit I'm much more like P.K. Page,
the poet who died last week. Interviews with her
have been broadcast on our national radio station,
and she said that she couldn't think when she was
painting, only when she was writing. Her paintings
are owned by the top galleries here, and I was relieved
to hear her say that.

But back to the question. If we are all one, then I am
every artist whose work I've ever seen when I paint,
or I am just me. But when I ate my breakfast far too
early for myself this morning, my deep thought was that
I am art. I'm just art doing its job, whatever that may be.
On a good day art is pretty good, on other days
it is present and accounted for. So that's who I am.
A rep rep representative for the art of art. Who are you?

Have a loving-who-you-are day.

P.S. My group at the art club I belong to got the news
tonight that we may lose the right to use the city
building we meet in. This is devastating news to all
of us, and we couldn't stop talking. I have never drawn
a model in my whole life (with many models) who
told the artists to be quiet, or she wouldn't pose. But that
happened tonight. Very strange. So we politely obeyed,
but it was unusual. Maybe some of her imperious
moodiness came out in my painting. I tried to stick
with my original idea, pure, quiet beauty, but... I hope
I represented art well in this one.