Practically tricked into painting. The best trick. No need to draw. No need to struggle for an idea. Steve said Step up to the canvas, pencil in each hand, trace yourself. Paint it. And she did for two years.

Sometimes it was a struggle anyway. Sometimes just what you would hope for from painting. Quick, bright, most every brush mark in its own right place. Worries of course, hue, tone, contrast, things a sculptor need not give a thought. Theories cluttering her head. Pacing the canvas thinking complimentary combinations, predominance, light forward, dark back, primary and secondary colors. Took her six years to find any nuance in color at all.

When it is good, the texture of paint makes her heart melt, the flow or press of paint on the canvas makes her sigh. The smell of oil paint makes her feel at home, the best home. Distressing painting is not a light-touched, energized placement of paint, adding up to something, you could not care less what because the color is what you have always hoped for in color - but a painstaking scratching into the canvas, figuring and reconfiguring, searching for a figure. Clearing away, finding, building. In paint it can kill the life. Clay wants this handling to find vitality. This is something to learn, the different way of paint.