Per Favore Non Andare Painting

The Artist, The Motivation, The Inspiration, The Letters to Amanda Painting carries a purity, a portion of time captured on canvas that expresses how the artist was feeling with each dab of paint. It continues to be a driving force, a proven way to communicate my inner visions, thoughts, and feelings to reality. Though, what good are painted words if they have no audience? No eyes to see. No thoughts to spur. Art has always meant more to me than just being creative. Art has forged alliances with countries, brought peace, created pain, saddness, joy, love, and is to this day a driving force for many things that exist in this world. However, my motivation for painting is more intimate. It revolves around something that so many of us have spoken about, felt, heard of, and desire. Love. Artists find the mundane and boring and see deeper to find inspiration. It can also come from wanting to have a voice in a crowd of oposition. Fact is that inspiration comes in many forms. Life influences us every moment that passes, and we all decide what we're going to keep in our minds and what will just be a fleeting juncture. For me, as a student in college trying to find something, anything to make my life less dark and cold, finding inspiration was nearly impossible. That is until inspiration found me. It seemed like time had stopped. Two years later...yes, you read that right, the universe decided to give me a second chance with inspiration. Apparently I can be a little, “thick headed.” This second time wasn't like the first. It was REALLY going to take some convincing that this motivation was actually meant for me. A couple of weeks later I couldn't wait anymore. I stepped on the edge, looked down, and after I picked up the paper I had dropped I took a deep breath. Time stopped just like before, except this time I was all in and took the leap. Her name was Amanda, and I knew that there had been some outside force that gave me this second chance. Now here's where you think, “so they fell in love, got married, lived happily ever after, gooey center, blah, blah, blah...” Ok, well, you're not wrong, but you're also not entirely right. You see, love is a powerful force and it can do things to us that we never thought were possible. It's beautiful, flawed, complicated, and it's been the motivation that keeps me painting and never giving up on this path...or in myself.