The Restless Mind

Painting "Pensive"I think that every artist experiences this… the mind that won’t turn off. You can hardly look at anything without analysing the values, shapes, or colours. You ponder exactly which mixture you would use to try to match the colour in the sky. You are chatting with someone and find yourself momentary distracted by the lovely shape of the shadows along their cheek line. It means that you find something interesting to see almost everywhere – the negative space between the branches of the tree, the shape of the shadows cast from a plant in a waiting room. I went through a period a few years back when I felt that I would like to turn it off for awhile, and just veg, but that rarely happened. Mostly these days, I go with the flow and simply enjoy the constant visual feast all around. How about you? Do you experience the restless mind of an artist forever analysing the colours and forms of the world?