I begin with the brush. It is a small brush. The work is a mystery. It was formed before the brush was dipped in ink. It has always been there. It has always known that at this moment, I, or someone else, would come to it.

I am glad that it is I that has come to it. And I come to it quietly with a keen awareness of my smallness. A child, seeking.

The first mark on the white is an answer and made more meaningful out of that sense of being called. I understand that I am not an artist and that I have no vision except that which will be revealed to me in the painting. I know nothing. I am a medium as the brush and the ink are each a medium; in the sense that the art, that has always been there, has found me worthy.

I simply show up to art.

I am the holder of the brush. I dip it into the ink when it needs loading and move it to the paper, and it is in the sweeping of bristles on fabriano that a truth is revealed.

Or not.

Sometimes, it is just the sacred silence.  A resting space and re-gathering of the unspoken.

I have no initial marks or preconceptions except that I have walked with the tree. I have known the touch of its living beneath my fingertips and have rested my forehead against its trunk in greeting and recognition. There are no lines to be followed on the page. I make my way as if its paths are hidden. An ‘other’ presence reveals and leads the brush on the paper …

And I?

Tap-tap, sweep-sweep, it demands of me nothing, except a ‘surrendering’ a ‘letting-go’. To be. To become.

Together.