Can a Photographer become a great Painter?

Ok...so I took art in High School and a ceramics class in College eons ago and just scraped by.  I can see beauty from the lens of a camera, distort it if I want and make it into something it may not have been but can I paint?

I see the beauty of the landscape and draw it into my mind but how do I get it to hands and transfer it to the surface of the canvas?

I birth two children who have the natural talent of the arts and are painters in their own right.  It just flows natural to them.  Did it skip a generation?

Could it be that I never really took the time to try?  I always seem to be in a hurry.  Never slowing down.  Some people would say that I have ADD!  I don't.  I use to be so ambitious that I forgot to take time for me and sometimes for my girls.  I was a corporate slave! Dare I say that?  Don't get me wrong.  I was just someone who had to be perfect.  Make the right decisions and do everything the right way.  I forgot along the way that it is ok to mess up....not make a perfect cut or line or whatever!

Then.....I got cancer.  The big C.  It slowed me down.  It made me look at the world in a different way.  It  convicted me!  I don't have to be perfect.  I don't have to be the smartest.  I don't have to be the best of the best....know it all. It is ok to just be me.......

Anyway, I have this blank canvas.  I painted it with gesso and that is as far as I got.  Afraid?  Maybe.  Determined?  I should be.  Can I do it?  Probably.  Will I?  Yes.  When?  I don't know.  Scared to mess it up?   You betcha!  Do I care?  I must because it is still a blank canvas.  Staring me in the face just asking to be finished ....well, at least to be started...... 

Stay tuned.  I will.  When?  I dont' know ...but I guarantee when I do it will be something.....maybe not perfect but it will be something!