A haunting blue evokes my muse… an elusive blue that moans in memories halls, summoning images from the liminal regions of my imagination, sparkling like fireflies over a southern marsh.

To begin an egg tempera painting like Evening Magic, I need to tap into something greater than me. Taller than the trees, higher than the walls, stronger than words contrived to constrain my boundless spirit.

I roam aquamarine and rocky shores, unrolling the films stored in my visual memory bank. I snip a scene here, a moment there — color and light everywhere.

In the studio by candlelight I slip on my Bose, maybe play Anna Calvi and let her voice sweep me away on Hunter. One more taste. One more time… I open the door wide.

Liquid blue surrounds my muse in an island sea, and frames her body in mountain mist. She smiles in sunshine, and when daylight fades she slips into sheer cotton, burns candles at her feet and sways in twilight music.

“I just want to be alone.” She confesses. “I’ve had a good life.”

One should not tell another how to be.

Blue rides a dark horse on a jungle trail, it bathes in a valley stream, and curls in cashmere beside a crackling wood fire. Blue swirls and hangs in memory like smoke caught in frozen winter air.

It’s a summer evening in another life on the lawn of a dead man’s mansion. An old blues man plays on the stage under a white tent. A full moon rises above BB King’s head, the music is hot, dew paints droplets of silver in the grass. Afterwards we walk through a forest of flowers, golden lanterns like fireflies guide our way.

Have I forgotten all I know about painting? Forgotten what love is? Why do rocks and trees no longer hold their allure? Or maybe I seek truth in secret places. It’s the root and marrow, not the fleeting flower or smile that bears the substance of life.

I walk in sunshine and starlight and hear the humming of a deeper music. No thing is titled by an adjective or noun. Unnamed colors marry a tribe of emotions. I see beyond coasts and clouds, forms resound from a distant consciousness, coming like the sound of a faraway night train. I’ve got my ear to the ground, trying to decipher an ancient code.

No one can tell another how to sing a tune only they can hear. Let your soul be the conductor of the beautiful chorus of your life.

Anna, you sing nothing lasts. Anna tell me, how do you paint the memory of blue?

Memories meld into dreams, swirl like carnival cotton candy on a vendors machine. Lights rise from the mystery of my conscious. There was dancing and laughter and sparklers in the night.

And all these things made Evening Magic.