The Blank Canvas

God’s incredible canvas outside my window!

We arrived in Santa Fe about ten days ago. The air feels different here—drier, thinner, expansive in a way that invites both deep breathing and deep thinking. It’s always a bit of a reset coming back. As usual, one of my first priorities was getting the studio set up.

The paints are out.
The palette is ready.
The easel stands tall, and the canvases lean against the wall, white and waiting.

And yet… nothing.

No spark. No vision. No clear direction for what comes next.

It’s not that I’m uninspired. If anything, Santa Fe is brimming with visual poetry. Outside my windows are soft golden hills, long shadows, the hush of desert light. This place is a living canvas. But as beautiful as it is, my heart doesn’t leap to capture it with paint. Not right now.

My mind keeps drifting—always—back to the figure. To faces, expressions, the soft weight of a shoulder turned slightly inward. I’m endlessly drawn to the silent stories that live inside a person’s gaze. That’s where I feel most at home as a painter.

But I’ve been wondering:
Can there be a story in a landscape, too?
Can a still-life hold emotion?

Of course they can. I believe that. I’ve seen that. But telling those stories in a way that still feels like me—that’s the part I’m turning over right now. The challenge isn’t just painting what I see; it’s painting what I feel, and somehow finding a way to translate that through light and texture and shape—whether I’m working with a human form or a pine tree bathed in late-afternoon glow.

I think this is the part of the creative process that often gets left out when we talk about “inspiration.” The quiet hovering before the first mark is made. The restlessness. The doubt. The push and pull between curiosity and uncertainty. The question of: what am I trying to say, and why now?

There’s no tidy answer yet. Just the gentle discipline of showing up. Looking. Listening. Trusting that something will come. That something always comes.

So for now, I sit with my blank canvas and ask it questions.
And I let it ask some of me in return.

Whether you're an artist, a collector, a dreamer, or someone figuring things out in your own quiet way—I'm glad you're here. If this resonates, I’d love to hear from you.

Let’s keep unfolding this together.

— Lynn