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As a professional artist, I paint every day. When I’m not holding a pencil or paintbrush, I'm constantly visualising my next painting and looking for that catalyst, that intangible substance, which will motivate me to create the next level of work. Some would call that looking for inspiration; Picasso called it looking for the Sacred Fire. I think the Sacred Fire is about right. 

When work became ponderous and fresh ideas went into stall mode, my favorite solution was to grab my gear and drive off to some unexplored destination with new sights, smells, colors and textures. The process always worked and I would return home refreshed with a few“ keepers” that I'd done on the trip, lots of sketches and images that would unconsciously creep into my psyche. The Sacred Fire had been found and I jumped back into my routine with new material.

The trouble is that sometimes that marvelous escape, the unstructured wander time is not always doable.  Two years ago, a local gallery owner called and invited me along with several other artists to paint Worcester, Massachusetts which is near my studio. I agreed to do some paintings but had a lot of reservations about painting in the city and the economic seriousness of the local art scene. I'd driven through Worcester for years and but had not painted any local subjects.  And I thought, “ Just what was I going to paint?”

I reverted to my wander strategy with a few differences. Instead of heading down some back road that follows the ocean or mountains, I spent mornings and evenings, weekdays and weekends, feeding countless quarters to parking meters, driving around the same block dozens of times and standing on sidewalks. I looked at architecture, traffic and people, absorbing the rhythm and flow of an old inner city environment that was trying hard in places to reinvent itself. I did lots of sketches, even more unintelligible scribbles, took lots of photos and painted notes in oil and watercolor. I finished a series of plein-air oil studies and from them a couple of larger canvasses. At some point, I realized that this process was interesting, even fun. To my total surprise, several pieces sold from the first show.

Since then, I regularly paint in the city and have sold  a number of other paintings though the gallery. Over dinner a few weeks ago, my friend who owns the gallery asked “ Are you becoming more interested in painting this place, now that your work is selling?”  My answer was that the first paintings forced me to observe subjects that I had only rushed past or just plain avoided.  The street scenes that I discovered turned out to be pretty interesting material.

I still travel to find new ideas and new things to paint. While it takes a bit of effort, you can find the Sacred Fire in places that you often look at but don't really see. There is poetry in ordinary things.