There are as many reasons to create art as there are artists. Georgia O'Keeffe said, "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way -- things I had no words for."  John Olsen thought of painting as, "a means of self-enlightenment." While Frida Kahlo and Andrew Wyeth seem to share a similar outlook, Kahlo said of her artwork, "I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality" and Wyeth stated "I search for the realness, the real feeling of a subject, all the texture around it... I always want to see the third dimension of something... I want to come alive with the object."

 

In thinking about her own work, recently a friend told me that all of it was about understanding. She felt that she was seeking to be understood and also to understand. As she talked to me about understanding, it occurred to me that I had never taken the time to see if there was a common thread through my own work. As I considered my own pieces, two thoughts kept rising to the surface, connecting and processing. Most of my pieces seek to establish a connection or to process an emotion. So for me, after contemplating my own work, I think the words of Pablo Picasso resonate best, "Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."