Several authors have composed in writing much of what I try to capture in painting.  GK Chesterton’s Man Alive is a fictional narrative about a character named Innocent Smith, and the tale unravels a number of mysteries that reveal Smith’s desire to constantly see the world afresh.  He is accused of polygamy, but really he re-proposed to his wife repeatedly to remind himself of what it was like to be newly-wed.  He is accused of burglary, but it turns out the house he broke into was his own.  An expert marksman, he shoots a man through the hat to make make him thankful for life.  Innocent Smith sees everything afresh.  I try to do the same through painting.

 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard is widely acclaimed and also shows an author reveling in the wonder of the visual world.  Dillard’s book is much more biological than Chesterton’s (which centers more around personal relationships than nature), but relishes in objects of nature much the same way that Man Alive pries the sweetness out of simply being alive. A flock of small birds exploding out of a cluster of Osage Orange provide an event worthy of contemplation, wondrous in itself. Both of these books encourage their readers to wonder at the miracle that is human and natural life.  

Here’s a taste of Chesterton from his more systematic philosophy of life, Orthodoxy (1907):
"...to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon.... The repetition in nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore."