The road we travel

Wherever you are on your road to success, it has been traveled on before by those you most admire. Some have reached the same point earlier in their lives, some later. However, they have all been in the spot you now stand, with the same hopes, fears, losses and successes. Sometimes the accomplishments seem of little consequence, until they are viewed from a perspective further down the road, when one realizes how that little step fostered a major development in their lives. Sometimes those losses are the biggest step to one's overall advancement because of what they teach you.

The step by step approach to fulfilling your dreams, which is, at best, tedious and limited in effect, has one inevitable impact. It gets things done.

Not once in the process of completing my new series of paintings did I foresee any of them completed on time or being part of a substantial whole. Each painting sat by itself, in various stages of completion, looking nowhere near the original concept that it was started with. It was only the step by step relentless application of one stroke after another that moved them along beyond my greatest imagination. Things happened with them and to me in the process that I had not envisioned. Color choices and their relationships evolved, almost on their own accord, with me being no more than a witness. You can see a partial compilation of the artwork in a new book entitled "Sumbrellas, A Vision of Martha's Vineyard", which is a catalog of images for the exhibition on August 8th at Cousen Rose Gallery.

The implementation of the paintings are a microcosm of the life I am building and if they can be pursued relentlessly, so can my dream. When we are in pursuit of something the steps to achieving it reveals itself one after the other, just like the steps taken. Sure one needs an overall plan, but the steps are minute, and it takes many of them to reach the goal.