Fragile (1370) 30x30" Oil/cold wax on panel © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves In the film, "With My Back to the World", the artist Agnes Martin talks about how the ideas for her paintings come to her in a flash of inspiration. In fact, she painted directly from those visions, carefully working out the mathematical division of space. When she finished a painting, she would simply wait until the next 'inspiration' came to her and didn't paint until it did. Once she had to wait 7 months, she said. My own ideas seem to come to me in various ways. Sometimes, like Agnes, I get a picture in my head of a painting. I never can paint the exact image because I see it only vaguely. It's rather like an idea for a painting or an idea for a series of paintings. I find that ideas keep coming the more I work. So many artists and musicians have said that. Twyla Tharp said that in her book, "The Creative Habit", as did the...