Reflections in a garden

This week I was working on a painting from my window of my garden. The difficulty was that the opposite window was reflected in the view.
I discovered that when I looked at the reflection, I could not see the trees but when I looked at the trees, I could not see the reflection. This shows that painting from photographs does not give a true representation of what we see. We focus on one thing and the rest is a blur. a simple reflection distorts our perception of what we think is real.

This is my first attempt of this kind of painting. The window frame with the reflection of the house opposite was very dark at first but when I looked more carefully, it was lighter because the leaves were shining through it.The prayer flags at the bottom of my garden were glowing through the reflection and the reflected sky, which was bluer than the sky in front of me,  had ghostlike leaves through it.






What this has taught me is that the theme of reflections is very complicated and shows me how the way in which I see things might have to be reassessed.

As well as considering how much I am expressing myself, if what I have painted is a reflection, then it is also a reflection of myself. I see the view, it is only through my eyes, slightly distorted and a sum total of my thoughts, conditioning and experience, and therefore, it is an expression coming from me.

Another thought.. if everything is a memory, experience and filtered through my mind, then I must only be a channel for what comes out on the canvas. Who am I if not a succession of memories and images?