The other day I felt overwhelmed. “We’re too busy!” my inner child screamed. I couldn’t easily get myself ready to go to my painting class, and I was about to give up. Not going, not painting there, and just resting seemed like what I needed to do.

But my inner voice said, just get yourself the fuck there! And so I did. What I had in mind was starting a new color plate, this time with black. Years ago, my friend Lisa Kasprzycki, a wonderful artist on Maui, lent me a book on “Painting Alla Prima”. In it, the artist suggested that you create your own color plates. He described how you can buy 1/8” Masonite boards  about 12 of them, and mix each of the colors with every other color of your palette. He named his palette of 12 colors, and for each mixture he suggested that you make 5 gradations of white.

Good old me of course chose 18 colors to work with (my palette), and bought ¼” Masonite boards. I bought ¼” wide artist tape, and created a grid of 19 1” squares horizontally with ¼”spaces in between, and six 1” squares vertically, again with ¼” spaces in between. My first plate was simply the 18 colors I chose and their 5 gradations of white mixed into each color. Then I made one plate each for Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red, Lemon Yellow, and Viridian Green. The idea was, to complete as many of the plates of the 18 as possible. Each plate took me many hours and days, over many weeks, to complete. And already the five plates I had finished became an important resource for me when I needed to find out how to mix a specific color that I wanted. And then I stopped for several years.

Now, I wanted to start at the other end of the palette, with black. I had been thinking about this for a while. The times are dark, lots of people are suffering, and I was curious what kinds of colors black would create if mixed with the other colors. So, I measured out the 1” squares on a new gessoed board and created the grid with my ¼” artist tape. This took a while. Then I started making the first vertical line: black, with five gradations of gray, by mixing in more and more white. Then, I mixed black with lemon yellow, and to my surprise, I created a beautiful, warm olive green with its gradation of tones. Next came cad yellow which resulted in a darker version of olive green and its gradations. Then came cad yellow deep which created a more reddish kind of moss green. I was mesmerized with the colors I created! How interesting it was to create these beautiful, rich, deep greens with black and yellow! I can’t wait to find out more about how black mixes with all the other colors.

What happened on that day, after I had woken up distraught and overwhelmed, thinking I am too busy and shouldn’t be part of this special studies painting class, that maybe I should quit it? Something shifted as I meticulously  mixed the colors and filled in the squares with each hue with the help of a small palette knife, trying not to go over the tape into another square, and to make the paint surface really smooth and even, making sure all the corners were filled. By the end, I was calm, centered, grounded, clear, and energized. A feeling arose inside that this is so right for me. I must make art! I must be an artist! And a deeper commitment yet emerged inside of me that this is my path until I die.