detail © Jean Burman 2011
I don’t always feel like painting.
I guess I’m just not as in love with it as I should be [grin]
These days other creative projects compete for my time… and painting sometimes has to take a back seat to other [more important] things.
And of course… there is always the constant lure of the pen.
It is mightier than the sword as you know… [and the paintbrush too sometimes]
I LOVE TO WRITE.
That’s undeniable.
Writing somehow flows more easily than paint for me.
You can write standing on your head on pretty much any street corner [even if people do tend to look at you kind of funny when you stand on your head]
That’s what I love about writing.
It’s a veritable moveable feast [grin]
Painting… on the other hand… you have to be in the right headspace for.
You have to be all set up… [ideally in a studio]
You have to BE THERE for painting… front and centre… on time and on task.
When you paint you have to roll with the punches.
You have to be master slave AND mistress all rolled into one… and even then… you WILL fail often… [or at least as often as you succeed]
It’s exhausting. And sometimes “the will” capriciously escapes me [grin]
Bob Genn describes the discipline of making art as a noble dependency
“Fact is… good easel time is a noble dependency that makes you a happier, more generous person… better able to enjoy an enriched family and social life”
He also describes the monastic artist as the creative ideal.
“I work each day until tired, read a bit, sleep well, and do it again the next day. Several days can pass without moving the car. It’s productive… the monastic life gets results. Pushing paint is a high calling. To do it well you need humility. You need to walk the walk. You need a well-regulated, simple life so that you might become both servant and student”
Well heck.
My life is neither simple nor well regulated [grin]
And I have never been one to confine myself to regimes.
I will always prefer the freedom of creative expression found capriciously on a beach somewhere… my brush in seawater… and my heart in the wind… and sand in pretty much everything (((chuckles)))
The other morning early… I set off to find a stretch of empty beach to paint on. That’s not so hard to find here. Especially in the early hours of the morning when most [normal] people are only just climbing out of bed.
I set up on a patch of sand and strolled down to fill up my water container with sea water.
I’ve been wondering about painting with seawater. Some people sprinkle salt on a painting for effect to make the paint disperse. I wanted to try it to see if seawater did the same thing. Anyway… I’m happy to report that it makes absolutely-no-discernible-difference-at-all… but I still absolutely love the IDEA of painting with seawater…
There’s just such a delicious freedom in it!
As the paint flowed… I let go of all expectations.
And planned for nothing.
I began churning out pictures not caring… tearing off sheet after sheet and laying them out on the sand to dry… trying only to capture the feeling of being there… down on the beach in the early morning as the wind picked up under the gathering clouds.
Every so often I had to down tools and chase the “little sketches” down the beach… [funny isn't it... how the wet side invariably lands face down] and to pick out the insects that kept dive bombing headlong into my puddle of paint!
Ahhh… the tropics… you literally have to paint in a pith helmet here! Seriously (((chuckles)))
Here is the short film I made at the beach. And the process of painting with seawater [grin]
It was a good day. And just what I needed.
I loved every minute of it!
LEAVE A NOTE HERE [you know how I love your feedback] 
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Why does it look so easy when somebody else does it? Nice new video, loved the music!
(By the way, how long did it take you in reality?)
Why does it look so easy when somebody else does it? Nice new video, loved the music!
(By the way, how long did it take you in reality?)
This was hard to watch for those of us that are going into our winter, unlike you Aussies hanging on upside down there on the world!!
Hahaha thanks Harry
You know… it’s a well oiled urban myth… [in accordance with other odd misconceptions such as the world is flat]… that Australia resides Downunder and Aussies cling on for dear life upside down as the world spins… [which may explain in part why we tend to write standing on our head and no-one takes us seriously]… but nothing could be further from the truth! We are… in fact… on top of the world down here [at least for half of the time anyway] (((chuckles)))
Thanks for taking a look… and commenting! Always very much appreciated
PS How long did it take really? Um… 20 years maybe give or take a few [just kidding - grin]… an hour I guess to finish off and tidy up including drying time [but I wasn't really counting LOL]
Enjoyed the music and the blog and lovely to see you relaxing and enjoying the day. Love Susie
Thanks Susie
So glad you enjoyed it. It was a challenge to be everywhere at once… painting as well as filming… and then later finishing the painting off and editing the film into something watchable and hopefully entertaining. Multiple media sure has it’s challenges… but yes… it was fun. And I enjoyed doing it. Funny how you can make something out of absolutely nothing in under a week. Love that 
What fun this looks like!–You obviously enjoyed it a lot–I love the music, it goes with the freedom that is so apparent in the video. Winter is just around the corner here–enjoy the sunshine and the sand between your toes–our frost is not so much fun.
Thanks Anita
Yes it was great fun! We are heading into summer here… AND the tropical wet season. So I am racing against the clock to get some beach time in with my paints and camera. Hopefully I will have a window of opportunity of at least a couple of weeks. But it’s hot. And sultry. How impossible to imagine for you I guess… with winter closing in there. What a totally amazing world we live in eh? 
Hi Jean,
You may not want to admit it but you do have to be in the right headspace with writing just like painting. I don’t consider myself much of a “writer” per se however I do enjoy writing, in whatever form that may take. I need to be in flow, sometimes it’s just a trickle & I have to move away from it for a while. The touble is, if indeed it is “trouble” that I feel a “pull” toward writing so I guess I will have to do something about it.
Now, painting with seawater. Are you just mixing your normal paint with the seawater to gain a different effect or is there something even more curious afoot here?…..enjoyed your vid…..
be good to yourself
David
David… I’ll gladly admit it… writing isn’t easy either. Don’t get me wrong. But comparatively? Yep it just flows. And you don’t need a setup. You just need a pen… and a paper napkin [if you're stuck for something to write on LOL]
As for painting with seawater… well… I guess you could say it’s just a metaphor for relaxing into the flow. Painting with seawater I would imagine would be heretical in the extreme in the watercolour world. But I’m not bothered. Some people sprinkle salt onto washes of watercolour paint which makes the paint repel and react and do all sorts of interesting stuff. So tongue in cheek and in celebration of the rebellious spirit of artists everywhere I was suggesting it… that maybe the seawater would make a difference. It didn’t. As you can see. Thanks so much for taking a look… I really appreciate that
Hi Jean,
I just write random thoughts down & try to make “sense of them” later when my flow isn’t working properly, so I’m fine as long as I have pen & some paper or I write on my hand. Thanks for clearing up the seawater thing. I can see that creativity runs through your veins.
be good to yourself
Yep.. along with seawater too I think sometimes! Take me further than a few hundred metres away from the beach and I get pretty rusty (((chuckles))) Thanks for coming back David
A successful novelist friend of mine once told me he didn’t much like writing, he like having written.
I hit a point once when I become dissatisfied with painting, and then I came to the realization that I’d been so concentrated on technique that I’d neglected content. I had to rediscover why I was painting what I was and not worry about the how.
Fun video, Jean.
Jean, it’s ironic that as a boy all I wanted to be was a painter, with no thought to becoming a writer. I backed into writing by way of acting, which I’d backed into in high school after getting involved in school plays as a set designer. Acting was my first career, and I started writing plays to provide myself with good roles. But by the time I finished the first play I decided I was wrong for the part. The handwriting was on the wall and I started writing in earnest. Most of my earnings through the years have come from writing — film and TV, plays, and a published novel — enough for me to get a decent amount from social security and my guild pension. Income from painting has always been ancillary.
The truth is I never enjoyed writing as much as I did painting and drawing. For one thing, I am essentially pictorial rather than verbal. Writing did always come fairly easy to me, perhaps because of the household I grew up in, but I’ve always thought of it as a tough job. Writing dialogue is pretty easy, but building a solid foundation can be arduous. Even when I love a project the days and weeks getting the story to flow seamlessly is a job, made more onerous when one is on a deadline. Non-fiction can be equally daunting, covering the material or ideas in a way that is readable and makes the point.
The fact is, I’ve always struggled with the nagging notion that painting (and illustration and cartooning) can’t be an appropriate career because it is too much fun, even when struggling to get it right, whereas writing is hard work. But then, as you said, to each his own, and many of us spend our entire lives trying to figure it all out.
The comments got a bit out of sync here John… so I put my reply to the above at the bottom [if that makes any sense at all]
Thanks John
I can’t imagine writing for a living and not enjoying it. I absolutely LOVE words… love to write… and really enjoy the lyrical flow and rhythm in the practice of writing. I don’t always get it right… far from it. But I love the quest.
I get what you mean about only enjoying something after the fact. I’m a bit like that with painting. I don’t enjoy the process as much as seeing the magic appear in the work long after the stroke has been made. People say “you must find painting relaxing” but I am happy to tell them [for me] it is anything BUT [grin] Painting is NOT relaxing… it might be a lot of things… but relaxing is not one of them especially if you have a clear goal in mind.
I think quite possibly there are assumptions made about our creative capacities that are really worthy of further investigation. It’s not an easy… or precise science. What keeps one person motivated bores another to tears. We all march to a different drum. If I thought I had to work to a monk’s timetable I might never paint again LOL [which arguably might be a good thing because nobody even mentioned the little picture I made - and that's fine because it was only just that - not a serious painting afterall not very much worthy of mention... but you see what I'm saying?] Maybe a monastic schedule would make me a more prolific painter but I don’t see that as necessarily a good thing if I am bored out of my brain by a timetable. Just me.
The magic happens in the gaps in between I reckon… in the moments we least expect it… like a lot of things in life I guess. What are your thoughts?
Painting is like banging your head on a wall Afterwards it is relaxing and so enervating (?) I shared your vid as I hoped the lads who paint with me would take a hint from it so lightly done and not scrubbed in shhhhh I enjoyed it too with a lesson for me also
I like writing as a newish ploy but half way through my history I realized the others would read it so had to THINK before the scribble
Now I am intp papier mache…..yes I am sticking to the keyboard as I type and try to get this PC to behave arggggggggghhh
Question Jean….If you HAD to do all this for a job would that take the pleasure away ? Thank you again for taking the time on a fabulous beach un the sun……grin as here we brrrrrrrrrrrrr Hugs
This IS my job Elinor [grin] but I love it all the same. I try to make what I offer here fun and happy and pretty light hearted but life isn’t always like that [as everyone knows] so sharing the fun… it makes me feel better… and hope it makes a difference to someone somewhere as well. So glad to see you’re “sticking to your guns” Elinor… even if you’re sticking to the keyboard as well LOL hanging out with the best of ‘em trying new things… papier mache… memoir writing… what comes next? I’m impressed! No seriously. That’s great! And I can’t wait to hear more okay? Don’t forget to rug up. It’s getting cold outside for sure by now although can hardly imagine it here in this sweltering heat LOL Take care Miss E. Hugs all the way back over to you as well… xoxo
Hi again John
You are so right that many of us do spend our whole lives figuring it out. That’s the best part I think. Life is a continual cycle of learning and discovery. I believe that’s how it should be.
QUOTE But by the time I finished the first play I decided I was wrong for the part. The handwriting was on the wall and I started writing in earnest UNQUOTE
Here is one of those gaps in between. One of those defining moments that shift our trajectory from one place to the other.
I’ve had some… but not in the field I would have wanted. I wasn’t raised in a particularly artistic household… but imagination played a huge part in my growing up. My mother was a business woman and my father was a farmer so there was no artistic role to follow [although my mother played piano by ear and was very musical so we children absorbed musicality from an early age] I had forays onto the stage in school plays and musical eisteddfods trying to make piano fit when a paintbrush would do. When my wrist clicked in staccato the nuns decided I should sing. So that’s what I did. And I loved that too. I didn’t own paints but I had pencils… and my primary school essays looked more like crude illuminated manuscripts than the literary assignment that was expected LOL I loved to draw. But drawing or painting [or writing] in my world wasn’t something people actually did for a living. I had no example of that. My career was in banking [how odd for a girl like me] and I wrote manuals… rather than novels… but I loved it and made it my own.
I was actually in Los Angeles when I remembered I loved to draw. I was sitting in a hotel room in Marina del Rey bored out of my brain waiting so I picked up the bedside notepad and began to sketch. At that moment the earth shifted… [literally]… and the building began to shake. Some omen eh? Actually I haven’t thought about it again in all these years until now… maybe it was a sign (((chuckles)))
Most of my writing is online now… which is easier I guess than producing copy on demand for a boss on a crippling deadline. So I’m lucky. I get to do what I want. And I’m certainly no expert. But I love what I do and I have dreams and plans stacked way up ahead. It’s like being reborn into a world I should have been in all along… but by a twist of fate and circumstance never got to do it. It’s those trajectories again isn’t it? What motivates or steers us to go one way or the other…
You’ve had such an interesting life John and you’ve done a great many things. What’s in store next? I loved reading your story here and although I’ve known you a very long time now I didn’t know the sequence. So thanks for sharing that here along with your thoughts on this. I really do appreciate it
Painting schmainting. Film/video is the most exciting medium, that’s what I’d be doing if I could. You get to combine it all, how can you beat that? And you’re fantastic at them, I’d collaborate with you anytime, any beach!
Thanks Nick
I’m going to hold you to that you know LOL I have an idea that involves artists [and film] and as soon as I get the details worked out you’ll be the first to know. Thanks so much for the lovely encouragement btw. So great… thank you 
Wow! I know you said you had some really good video/movie software…but your creativity is wonderful! I enjoyed this little video enormously, Jean!!
Thanks Nancy
I haven’t actually installed the new stuff yet… I’ll probably be dangerous when I do! I’m currently using the updated version of the program I was using and that lets me do enough for now. I love the process. It’s paintstaking fun… but I think painting watercolor sets we artists up brilliantly in the patience department (((chuckles))) Thanks so much for coming over to take a look! 