Sometimes I see something that makes me feel this thing that I don’t know how to explain: it's like a clue that something wants to be painted. I catch my breath and stay still to feel it. In the beginning, it was skies: bold, bossy skies that taught me how to paint. There were lots of skies, and faces, houses, flowers, all sorts of things - they all taught me, and teach me still. And over time it became other things: seaweed, sea creatures, piles of things. Things that weren’t so easily painted; things that didn't clearly dictate what they were asking to become. I didn't want to paint the seaweed, exactly, but there was something there. The feeling was there, but the directive was murky.

And so I have to learn to swim inside my dreams,
in case the sea should come and visit me in my sleep.
-Pablo Neruda