My boat is so small

For a while I've had a notion for a painting, showing a boat on a calm sea.  I tried painting it and I was never really happy with it.  It never convinced me and I now realise that was due to the painting just not true.  Instead of painting how I feel, I was trying to paint what wish I felt.  

It is so easy to paint a kind of wish fulfilment, but it never rings true. And I think I realised that after coming back from a holiday where I visited the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.  Seeing so many of his wonderful works has really impacted on me.  I don't pretend to be the kind of artist he was, but I felt inspired by him and his truth.

So in order to paint the reality of life, I painted over my calm but tedious seascape with a sea based on a Van Gogh painting.  It isn't perfect, I could go back to it, but the reality is, it reflects the turbulence of emotion, the reality of life.  So instead of painting a boat, it is from the point of view of my little boat, coming onto the shore, looking back to the wild sea.

O God, Thy Sea Is So Great And My Boat Is So Small