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I rarely attempt to paint people. When I was younger it was because I had no interest in painting them. Later it was because I'd never developed the skill to do it well. It can be crushing to want to paint the grace and spirit you see in a face and to fall miserably short. So I rarely try. Landscape is a completely different language, especially the way I approach it. That is where I find the most fluent poetic language. But I secretly wish I could paint people in a way that showed what I feel when I read T. S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday passage about the Lady of Silences. This is the closest I've come, done on the second week of the tour, on a morning when I had the paints out and happened to catch myself with my guard down.