Diva

"Diva" by Radmila Sarac (click to enlarge & focus)

I'd like you to meet my friend, Radmila. She took up painting less than a year ago. In her living room, using only her own wild sense of color, surety, and form, she began covering canvases. Chris, her fiance, showered each with praise. The paintings gradually grew larger -- this one is almost 4 feet tall -- and more confident. Paintings hang on all their walls, with more waiting to be hung. She sold several to raise money for charity, and the bidding was fierce. When she has her own website, I'll let you know.

If you are a painter, you know before you know. The paint calls to you -- the color, the mess, the nakedness, the lushness, the savagery. If you are a painter, surrender. The canvas will teach you everything you need to know.

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further. The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes, and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible, and, as nearly as possible, definitive utterance of this singularity.

--Rainier Maria Rilke, "Letters on Cezanne"