Marcia Zweig
Painter
When I paint, I try to make more lasting those images I don’t want to lose. Whether sunlight raking a tree or reflections on icy water or clouds just hanging in the sky, I try to capture as much as I can of the specific vision that has caught my attention. I enjoy landscapes because the experience of seriously studying everything I possibly can about a scene - observing the light, feeling the temperature, noting the time of day, breathing the air - excites me. A really strong determination to capture the scene and convey my feelings follows if I’m lucky. Mary Oliver considered “ attention the beginning of devotion.” Taking the time to attend to my surroundings always excites and provokes me in positive ways. So when I’m painting a subject, I gradually begin to understand it more completely, to know it. To really communicate the beauty of splashing water or a tree’s branching structure, nothing takes the place of trying to paint it. Eventually I feel as if I’ve been introduced to the subject for the first time and see it afresh — its complexity, its meaning, its importance. I paint to learn and to share.
