For me, it’s about the paint – the color, brushstroke, my intention, and placement. The experience of painting teaches me something everyday.

I use lenses to get the composition. I get a sense of the terrain I’m working with: long distance, a partial form, something of a gesture, a glimpse. Maybe it’s close up, intimate, recognizable and pretty straightforward. The lens gives me ideas.

There is no narrative to speak of. There is usually a context for the space—an architectural feature or a grid to ground the images.

I am interested in archetypes of all kinds: original forms that are basic to all of us, essential truths lived out now. I like colors and forms that speak of Presence, something seen that has its own reality, its own particular life and gets my attention. It’s connected to a bigger story, something beyond my grasp.

I like reading about the new sciences, and exploring the idea of really living in many dimensions at the same time. This sounds to me like symbolic life – the capacity to unite opposites and experience the numinous. When I read that the eternal is a dimension of the here and now it expands how I understand holiness: everyday life lived out with compelling, vital awareness, awake, moment to moment.

Painting connects me to something greater than myself and makes me more myself. It helps me to see.

Plotinus says: "We are what we look upon and what we desire." I believe that.

-Bettina Clowney