When empathy emerges

My husband had to go into Seattle yesterday to help our daughter with her car, so I had the dining room table to myself -- which means I had another chance to paint.

The urge to paint is really strong, but I don't seem to have a personal style yet (though I clearly have a personal color palette) so I mostly just play and see what emerges.  This was the first of two paintings, and when it was done I was... well, done.  But not all that sure what it was or why it looked the way it did.

The second painting went through lots of stages, and in the end it was kind of a smeary mess that looked vaguely like a body of water, but at least I understood it wasn't finished yet.

What's interesting is that all night long I dreamed of what would come next in the unfinished painting, and this morning, when I awoke, I realized that both of the paintings are responses to the burning of Breezy Point during Hurricane Sandy.  Both seem to predominantly feature water, but each has a patch of fire with the stark black lines of burned out buildings.

I did not set out to paint these things, nor did I realize how profoundly I had been affected by the images -- and the concept -- of those burning homes surrounded by water.  It's a little bit like the experience of writing fiction, when the characters take on a life of their own and you just sort of watch them evolve -- except in this case it's a brush, and color, that seemed to take over the canvas. It's a very curious experience, and leads me to think that empathy lives at a very deep subconscious level within us... 

And now I'm wondering, what if I auctioned off the two paintings and gave all the proceeds to the relief fund for Breezy Point (if there is such a thing)?  Or maybe just the Red Cross?