Art and Lies

"Picasso had come back from the dead and she wanted life. She wanted to force life through the hour, to make it yield up its secrets, to make it waste no days of her reprieve in a self-built tomb. How much time did she still own? One year, twenty, fifty? The clock ticked as it always had but now she could hear it."

Art is the ultimate salvation. In art, humans not only create a thing that did not previously exist but in doing so they capture a moment and the feelings and emotions that overwhelm them in that moment, and attempt to facilitate a communication with other humans that will then reflect that same moment and those same feelings, and allow other humans to experience the artist's experience. My teachers used to say that while we have a general consensus on what hues correspond with which words, we can never really know if blue looks the same to me as it does to you. Seeking to give someone else the very experience you have had is an incredible sacrifice. It risks your autonomy, your free will, and your existence as a unique and irreplaceable creature, because if two people have the exact same experience it defies all those things. Art provokes. Art expands. Art delivers. Art captures. Art preserves. Art connects. Art is language.

A little introspection for your "have a nice day"

Jeanette Winterson is causing my brain to shrivel up like dead plant.
So I'm taking a break to blog :)


It's funny how life is, deciding to throw the most random stuff at you, just as you're getting to the point of having things worked out. It constantly proves to me that I am both smarter than I get credit for, and at the same time woefully insignificant in the grander scheme of the universe. I'm okay with that.

I've been working on a new painting lately, and doing a sort of photo documentation of it's progress. I want to be able to go back and point at the moments in my process that I totally destroy the preconception and let the painting itself start making the decisions about its fate. While I'm doing this, life brings up my one greatest vice (which, inevitably, is my greatest challenge in the same). This happens to be other people. In general and in specifics. In general, other people are what i understand most and least, relate to most and least, and appreciate most and least. They cause me the greatest pain and greatest joy in my life. And for me they are the great puzzle.
I've never been perplexed by questions about the mysteries, secrets, or the point of life. I've never concerned myself with the idiosyncrasies of nature, because those seem to be very logical. People, however, are the pinnacle of my wonderings.

It is, additionally, a well known fact that in specifics I will carry flames for other people with whom I have been able to connect for eternity. For as long as my spirit exists, those flames will burn. I don't trust people easily, nor do many people understand or really know me. When I find a person who touches my mind, and on rarer occasions my heart, I hold on tight.

The magic of this is that my paintings seem to reflect the periods of my life clearly, and at the same time they hold their own separate identity.
The painting that I am growing right now is doing that very thing. It is also becoming obvious to me that some of my work is clearly reflective of my heart, while other pieces are clearly reflective of my mind. The two are very different creatures.

The painting will be done in its own time, and then you will be able to see the whole project. Until then, I'll leave you with this, because I was never as much a master of words as I have been with a paintbrush...


Lines of my forehead,
from trying to thread the needle of this idea,
without letting you know it.

If you said I could
I'd throw the maps right out the window,
take the longest way home.

Chris Pureka

bookgasm

The Rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 (or more) pages.
2. Open the book to page 123 and find the 5th sentence.
3. Post the next 3 sentences.



Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
Page 23, fifth sentence and three following:

"Close to the heart is a sundial and at the heart and orange tree. This fruit had tripped up athletes while others have healed their wounds. All true quests end in this garden, where the split fruit pours forth blood and the halved fruit is a full bowl for travellers and pilgrims. To eat of the fruit means to leave the garden because the fruit speaks of other things, other longings."



go.

the tortoise of recreational activities

"..I'm secretly a very slow reader. I was once a fast reader, what happened? Words got bigger."



inspired by one of my new blog-obsessions, Automatic Win, my reading list:*

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
Full Frontal Feminism - Jessica Valenti
Backlash - Susan Faludi
Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
The Bostonians - Henry James


Sometimes I wonder why I can't plow through piles of books like I used to; I blame high school, and further, college. For forcing my brain to become and automated machine skimming and seeking out only the absolutely crucial information to comprehend and forgoing the rest in order to make time for things like sleep and food. And for subjecting me to such ridiculous things as "what do you think the climax of the book is? oh really, well you're wrong."

I used to love reading. I'm trying to teach myself to love reading again.
I mean hey, I taught myself to knit, surely I can teach myself to do something I already used to know how to do. Right?







*caveat - said reading list does not guarantee the completion of the reading of these books by any specific date herein this calendar year. thank you. :)

A Wall for the Body, a Circle for the Soul

"Right to the top I climbed, where I could watch the circling snow fill up the town till it blotted it out. All the black blotted out. I could have made a very impressive sermon...'My sins like a cloud hung over me, he blotted them out when he set me free...' that sort of thing. But where was God now, with heaven full of astronoughts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup. As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever."

~Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, book of Ruth