Deborah Barlow blogs a selection of passages from Gerhard Richter's Writings 1961 – 2007. Visiting the Outer Banks, Barlow finds the power of nature – the action of wind and waves – to be an apt metaphor for the process of painting as described in Richter's book.

Richter: "Any thoughts on my part about the ‘construction’ of a picture are false, and if the execution works, this is only because I partly destroy it, or because it works in spite of everything—by not detracting and by not looking the way I planned. I often find this intolerable and even impossible to accept, because, as a thinking, planning human being, it humiliates me to find out that I am so powerless. It casts doubt on my competence and constructive ability. My only consolation is to tell myself that I did actually make the pictures – even though they are a law unto themselves, even though they treat me any way they lie and somehow just take shape."