My friend Jane is a terrific painter – she can whip out portraits or landscapes – absolutely lifelike and inspired – in a matter of hours. She works in her home studio from photographs taken of the model or the landscape – or from still life vases of flowers in her studio.

 

Her studio is chaotic - boxes of jumbled oil paint tubes, coffee cans full of protruding brushes, solvents, thinners, canvases, frames, photos, spot lights – yet from all the chaos she is able to repeatedly produce paintings of people and scenery which are “more real” than the photographs from which she works.

 

What is going on here, I thought. 

 

From a chaotic jumble of tools and paints Jane’s mind directs her arm, hand and brush to make thousands of split second color choices from her palette, and thousands of color blending choices as well.

 

I began to look at the dabs of oil paint on her palette, and found tell tale traces of color mixing – greens in the yellow, white, blues. 

 

Man, what is it with Jane’s mind that gives her this color mixing sense? 

 

Unperturbed by the organizational chaos, spot by spot, stoke by stroke, a blank canvas becomes a lifelike scene. 

 

Amazing the work the mind can do.