as they were meant to be

Great paintings -people flock to see them, they draw crowds, they're reproduced on coffee mugs and mouse pads and anything you like.  And, I count myself in the following, you can have a lifetime of perfectly sincere museum going where you traipse around enjoying everything and then go out and have some lunch. -Donna Tartt

But if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don't think  "oh I love this painting because it's universal.  I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind."  That's not the reason anyone loves a piece of art.  Its a secret whisper from an alleyway...an individual heart-shock Your dream. -Donna Tartt

And when you're the one painting them, you're involved in their calculus, you have to sort through the detritus and the wavering sense of color and sense and balance, you have to say this is done.  And you can never ask yourself is this any good, because of course not, none of them are any good what-so-ever.  They just are. As they were meant to be.

And when someone steals them, comes in your house and walks out with six hundred of them, and you watch the police secretly smile at one another and quietly roll their eyes, and they look for them "for a couple of weeks" but they have to get on to "real" crime, and the FBI let you know with their pronunciation and informative short lecture on "real crime" (wait I've heard this before) that they will have nothing to do with this, well you get dog-tired.

Sorry my posts have been somewhat lax, but i'm painting some in odd sizes, mostly much bigger, and I've been reading books, and once that starts you are in for it.  All these new paintings I think of as books, old books, though most of the books I'm reading are new...

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed.  And that's a hard lesson of reality. -Donna Tartt