The Visual Turn

I began to paint in 2023, soon after I turned 70. At an age when I am rarely surprised, I feel I am channeling a new creative impulse while also returning to something from my past. As a young child, I was thought to be talented in art. When I was six, my father submitted one of my crayon drawings—a picture of trees done on brown newsprint paper—to a contest for children sponsored by our local museum. I won first prize, and I still have that drawing. Looking at it now, I can’t for the life of me see why it won the contest, unless there was a Cy Twombly fan among the judges. (I note a vague resemblance to the spidery work of that modernist artist.)