On rocks, and the small things we paint

There is a basket by the back door where the river stones live. Some of them I picked up years ago, others last week. They wait there patiently until an afternoon like this one finds them.

I do not sketch first. I look at the stone, turn it in my hand, and let the shape suggest the landscape. A long flat one becomes a desert horizon. A round one becomes a moon over a saguaro. The rock decides, and I just keep up.

The brushes I use are too fine for anything practical. Two ochres, a sage, a small black, a touch of white. By the time the light leaves the window, six stones are drying on a cloth and the studio smells faintly of linseed and cold coffee.

I give most of them away. The point was never to keep them. The point was the hour spent making them, with no deadline, no audience, and nothing on the table but the next small stone.