When You Know, You Know

There are photographs I take because something catches my eye. And then there are photographs I take because, in that moment, I already know I am going to paint them.

I’ve experienced that feeling countless times. I can’t always explain what makes one moment different from another. Maybe that is what people mean when they talk about the eye of an artist. It isn’t necessarily about seeing something beautiful. Sometimes it’s about seeing a moment that feels complete—a little story unfolding in front of you—and knowing you want to hold onto it.

Two paintings come to mind when I think about that instinct.

The first began at a gas station in Collinsville, Oklahoma.

An old man with a cane was getting ready to climb into the passenger side of a Cadillac that looked as though it had driven straight out of the 1950s. The driver had just finished pumping gas. There was something about the whole scene—the old car, the old man, the cane, the anticipation of the ride—that made me reach for my camera.

I took the photograph home and began painting.

But I wasn’t interested in reproducing the gas station or the city street exactly as I had seen them. I wanted to paint the scene I had imagined when I took the photograph. So I changed the background, turning the Collinsville setting into a more abstract landscape. I used oil pastel to recreate the feeling of the moment with less noise and fewer distractions, putting the focus where I thought it belonged: on the old man with his cane, getting ready to ride shotgun in that beautiful old Cadillac.

The second painting began with a photograph I took in Brooklyn, New York, when my daughter lived there.

We walked everywhere, and I especially loved the old neighborhoods, with their streets lined with brownstones. One day, an African American couple was walking toward us. They were dressed up, and they looked striking together. He wore a business suit with a red tie. She wore a pretty red-and-white dress and a wrap around her head.

I took their photograph. Again, I knew.

When I painted them, I didn’t try to make the painting look like a photograph. Instead, I painted loose and fast, letting the brushwork stay visible and allowing the figures to emerge from the painting rather than carefully constructing every detail.

The result was exactly what I had imagined it could be when I first saw them walking toward me.

I listed the painting on Etsy, and several months later it sold to someone in Michigan. I still have the painting of the old man and his Cadillac. I don’t know why it hasn’t found its home yet. Maybe it is simply waiting for the right person.

I regularly sell prints of both paintings, which tells me that perhaps other people see something in those moments, too.

I’ve thought about what makes me stop and take a photograph that I know will become a painting. I can’t come up with a formula. It isn’t always beauty. It isn’t always an unusual subject. It isn’t even necessarily a particularly important moment.

Sometimes it’s the way a person stands. Sometimes it’s the colors. Sometimes it’s a story I can imagine without knowing anything about the people in it. Sometimes it’s just a feeling.

Some moments just have to be painted. I can’t explain what the criteria is.

When you know, you know.