Art shines a light

The more thoughts that flow in my What is Art? series on Twitter - @jenny_hare - the more I fall in love with painting – if that’s possible because I’m already besotted.

It’s just so fabulously complex and yet simultaneously simple that it takes my breath away.

I look out of my window as I type this and the mizzle is coming down but the colours are enchanting – the blue, coal and great tits on the peanuts lighting up the foreground and beyond the autumn gold and russet leaves contrasting strikingly with the darkly rain-soaked tree trunks.

It’s a work of art.

What has this to do with painting? Well - everything. It feeds my mind with colour and beauty and makes me think of the great artist who must – surely? – have somehow created this. And we are all a part of that art and wholeness and truth and sheer amazingness.

And it makes me itch to let my impressions flow through paint – not just of natural scenes but of the spirit and joy that are almost palpable when you think of the art all around us in our astonishing world.

My work may be clumsy, or just capable and I often start over – but sometimes the magic flows and I produce something I love and that others do too.

And if a painting gives pleasure to just one other person in the whole world then that’s all that’s important. Just as when I wrote self-help books, I wrote to perhaps just one person who might find it helpful, now I paint to bring pleasure and light to someone or sometimes the many who will fall for the painting.

Art is a meeting of souls – and it’s joyous, isn’t it?

Love and light on a drizzly, mizzly November day – may they shine for you too.

Jenny