I just returned from traveling for a press event at Scarpetta’s in New York City to promote the new Montage Deer Valley Residences.

Before this event met up with my friend Jonathan Fields for lunch at Soho House, a hip kind of country club for creatives.

Jonathan has just authored his second insightful book “Uncertainty, Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance.”

If you are involved in any type of entrepreneurial endeavor or if you are a creative who makes their living by way of your creative output. Get the book!

Jonathan has outlined clear and useful insights that should be part of every MFA and MBA program.

I met Jonathan a few years back when he was writing “Career Renegade, How to Make a Great Living Doing What you Love.”

I’ll admit it.  I am biased because my company was profiled in Career Renegade, but I can tell you that each story was inspiring, as was my discussion with Jonathan last week.

As we talked about our creative process as it relates to our uncertainties and fears we also explored the antidote, which seems to be both acceptance and ritual.

My ritual takes this form.

• Before I start a painting I put my studio in order. It has to be clean and free of distractions.
• Then I will light one stick of sandalwood incense.
• I’ll meditate in silence for about 15 minutes.
• I pause in gratitude for the privilege and opportunity to make my living painting.
• Then I set my intention to do my best work that will inspire and move others.
• Before I pick up the paintbrush I’ll put on some soulful music that might include Amy Winehouse.

This creative ritual drops me down into a familiar mode.  I know, and I accept, that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  I remain loosely attached to the outcome.

I do know that each time I preform this ritual and I get into a familiar headspace, I’m increasing my chances of creative satisfaction.

"Tearing Vines" Ann Rea ©, 30"x40", charcoal on canvas, To Kalon Vineyard, Napa Valley

This partial shot of “Tearing Vines” was snapped where it sits now, laying flat on a drying rack while the very thick layers of oil paint dry.

I was struck by its watery quality from this perspective.  And I was reminded of a comment made by a talented interior designer. “Your paintings have a fluid, watery quality.”

I thought, why is that?  A watery quality is not something I have deliberately or even unconsciously imbued in my work.

But I’m ever conscious and influenced by the sight of water.  I literally stare over the largest expanse of it every day.

My private live work studio overlooks the Pacific. It’s an ever-changing cycle of color from a completely colorless form.  Like a mood ring, I watch it change with temperature and the cycles of the sun and the moon.

But why else would my right brain create watery images?  Emotion.  That’s why.

Straight, angular lines, flat plains of color, communicate less emotion.  An Edward Hopper painting demonstrates this.

Fluid lines with gradations of color say, “I’m feeling it, I’m feeling you.”

It may look like I’m painting a vineyard or an aspen grove in the snow but it’s all coming from my emotional register.

That’s what shapes the line, guides the brush stroke, and makes me move.  It’s the energy, the fire, that keeps me up past midnight sketching in charcoals, covering my hands in black dusk, messing up the last manicure and not caring.

I love watching the Pacific Ocean colored by the sky and the sun its reflecting.

And I love shaping color.  Its formed from the fire I feel inside.  Color that comes from emotions that I may never find the words for but that I will only ever express in paint.

As I complete a series of Robert Mondavi Winery’s To Kalon Vineyard, I’m asked what is my subject?  It is simply a moment of color and my feeling in that moment. Hence my tag line, “Savor the colors of the moment.”

But what is color really?  Scientifically, color is light vibrating on different frequencies.  The Impressionists observed that color, or light, changes each moment as the sun moves over the sky.

The Impressionists also knew that color is shaped by surfaces and surrounding reflections and absorptions of other color.  It’s a complex business and painter’s attempt to simplify this illusion on canvas.

Back to the right brain, color is emotion.  So how is emotion expressed in color?  By blending it and smearing, painting, mushing it on the canvas with feeling behind it.

People have asked how I know how to blend colors.  What percentage of red and blue do I mix to get purple?

Like a chef, you measure your ingredients when you’re starting out but then you just feel it.

I respond to color intuitively.  That response is where the juice is, the depth of feeling. I don’t think it, I feel it.

Before I complete a large-scale canvas like this 30” x40” of “Tearing Vines” of Robert Mondavi Winery’s To Kalon Vineyard for Dave and Cheryl Copham, I get the foundation down.

The foundation is the light and dark, the range of contrasts.  I’ll use a warm neutral foundational color, Transparent Oxide Red.

It’s at this stage that I delineate my light source, establish the shadows, and give the piece my emotional energy and that is my feeling in the moment.

"Tearing Vines" Ann Rea ©, 30"x40", charcoal on canvas, To Kalon Vineyard, Napa Valley

What inspires art?  You know.  Authentic human passion, love, lust, sexual attraction, and all of the self doubt and insecurity that lurks around our minds, fueled by the prospect of rejection.

There’s no better channel for this energy than creative expression.  It’s therapy and it is the vital ingredient to great art.

The creative realm is a place where the songwriter can take the saddest sentiments and inspiration and transform this into the most beautiful and peaceful lyric and melody.

I understand that the Picasso exhibit, currently at the De Young museum of San Francisco, organizes the presentation of each of his artistic periods by his muses.  Makes sense to me.

I was with a friend last week and we walked to her favorite dive Pakistani restaurant on Russian Hill.  You can sit there for hours sipping unlimited amounts of Chai.  I was all over it.

She’s there so much that the staff knows her.

We started chatting with the Pakistani man behind the counter about movies. He told us that Western movies deal with a full range of subjects.  But Bollywood movies are all about; you guessed it, authentic human passion, love, lust, and sexual attraction.

Why am I bringing this up?  I’ll admit it, while I was sketching the canvas for “Tearing Vines” as I was carrying on a, let’s just say, an ongoing flirtatious text dialog with a man I’ve known.

I texted him the image above,  his replay, “Intense.”  Intense is right.  I’m in San Francisco and he’s, well, elsewhere and unavailable.  That can cause some tension.

But I digress.  You don’t need the naughty details.  I’m just making the point that art is born from feelings. And human passion, love, lust, and sexual attraction are amongst the strongest and most intense we can experience.

At this point in my life I’m embracing and celebrating this part of my life.  It will make for better art.