What is it to be a painter?

Who am I as a painter? What is it that makes me paint? Where is it coming from? These are the existential questions that plague my mind. I often delibriate on how these paintings come into being. I am so used to seeing myself as merely the vessel for paint, to me it is clear that paint is its own entity. Or really just consciousness, but in form and space. Experiencing itself from my eyes, my point of view. It begins with an intense awareness, seeing things fully. Feeling everything, feeling things in their entirety, feeling so much that it needs a release. The artists suffer when there is no output to process the input. I can only speak from my experience, but being Neurodivergent I am aware of how intense life can be for me. Emotions consume me, and there is always more depth and meaning to things than initially appears. Painting allows me to grasp and feel this. It provides a means of escape but not escape in a negative way. I am able to step outside of myself to learn about what I a, experiencing. Expression of the self, the mind and the emotions. Words can feel too solid, with no room to read between the lines. They have come before, and I am not a poet with words, so I have had to make my own. The visual language I am developing feels familiar but is also constantly changing. It mirrors my own development, my evolution and understanding. Forms, patterns and colours continually emerge. A truth arises, and in this moment of making I am just the paint. When caught in the back and forth, the play of paint on the brush and the mixing of colours. I become hypnotised in this act of creation. The silence and space opens up to me in a new dimension, the paint begins to talk. My attentions falls onto the now, the constant noise of my brain begins to soften, as my intuition takes over. The solidness of my surroundings dissipates, as the painterly energy takes over. I am simply observing, finding myself in the action, rather than my thoughts. And it is here I question; where is this coming from? I do not seem to know what painting is, as I feel I am not choosing where or how to apply the paint. I am not even choosing to paint. I am giving into a desire, but one that feels a necessity. It is my purpose to do this, I have to record, create. This process of unearthing something, peeling back the canvas to reveal the painting much like a sculptor frees the statue from the marble. I am mapping the same paths painters took before me, the same ways in which trees grow and flowers bloom. Nature does not hurry but everything is complete. It challenged the perception of what it is, as it can be deliberate, but also not. The brush has the ability to move on its own, before being handed back to me. So are all these actions by me, so that leads us to question what we are. Which again is the question that pervaded everything.  A quest or a journey to self realisation, understanding.