4 Quotes by Dawn Tripp

I dip the very tip of my brush into the blue. I want to taste it. I want the thrill of color moving inside me again. The brush floats near the canvas. Where to start? Where to start? A stroke there, but the moment I’ve made it, it’s wrong.

I BOUGHT THIS house for the door. The house itself was a ruin, but I had to have that door. Over the years, I’ve painted it many times, all different ways: abstract, representational, blue, black, brown. I’ve painted it in the hot green of summer, in the dead of winter, clouds rushing past it, a lone yellow leaf drifting down. I painted the door open only once. Just before he died. In every picture after, it was closed.

He’d dust the dirt off with his fingers, wash it in his mouth so it came lean off his tongue like a language.

A life is built of lies and magic, illusions bedded down with dreams. And in the end what haunts us most is the recollection of what we failed to see.