Lingering... and floating.
"There was nothing I could have done to save them..."
"Maybe so...
but the fact is, you didn't want to"
- from the movie Capote
these lines are lingering with me, as is the movie. so dark and psychologically gripping, intense. those lines can and do apply to so much.
it's so wrong to me that the death penalty is still being used today. ridiculous. I'd like to dive more into this. make some work about it.
I'm floating through this dark head space on this colder night of creeping Fall. It's stealing away the summer days that I have very much slept through and been indifferent toward. the cooler air and cloudy skies are a bit soothing but also dig into a certain sadness that is ever present for me; I can never quite shake it. I think it is the sadness of humanity's suffering, and things that I can not quite change... or can I? so many people who need help, a world that needs saving... from ourselves, mostly. that dark part of ourselves that each of us has and fights against, or tries to.
Off to make more chamomile tea to soothe my soul with warmth in this shifting space of the reality that I am in...
chamomile tea brings me back to being with my mother, in my childhood home, warm light, Greek honey, and the love of family. It also brings other feelings that I would need more than a few immediate words to describe. perhaps I can't describe it with words. perhaps I should try. it is my childhood. that is what I have to dive into next in my writing, I always felt that I grew up differently than most others around me, felt alienated, felt that it was difficult to share my experience because really, who except me or my immediate family would understand? it was embarrassing? - very much so. (not always, of course. but often. and often quite wonderful, with many blessings and much love!)
thinking of things such as the death penalty makes me wonder if I really should be focusing on larger societal / humanitarian issues with my art - is my work becoming too abstract and self-referencing to make much sense to others...? (what exactly is it doing?... )the endless plight( what am I doing by creating it? I am devoting my life to artmaking - have limited time, resources, and a voice - and I believe, a responsibility to do something "good" with these things.) I have to continue on the paths I am on currently - I am saying things with this work for sure but what exactly is it I am saying... it is not explicitly political or anything of that nature. It's deeply internal and a passageway through the subconscious, a navigation of formal elements in painting, space, time, movement, associations of form, relationships, concepts... it isn't speaking out about a particular issue as much as it is investigating, navigating, interacting, exploring... tying together. Would I make more of an "impact" or "difference" if I were to scream loudly about issues such as the death penalty, oppression, social injustice, inequality, plasticity, consumerism... I have an endless vat of rage that I could easily tap into and create work about all of these things and more, in a variety of ways. But for some reason I have this deep and internal need (or maybe self-serving want/desire?) to create the things I am creating now. A part of me just stated within me somewhere that I may have no choice but to create what I feel the "need" to create right now.
Maybe that's not it at all.
Maybe it's just that I simply enjoy what I am painting now. I enjoy painting. It's my solitude, it is my passageway, it is my escape and at times a painful almost ascetic exercise, it provides me with emotional and spiritual healing, it is a catharsis and a stream of consciousness at times... a channeling and a screaming rage. it is color, which I love. it is space, which I play with. I'm enjoying that one thing can be balanced to read in different ways at once. it's narcissism? it's journeying through the self which then has the capability of being more universal - personal/universal, universal/personal. it's endless possibilities and fields of color flowers. it's dreams, it's nightmares. it is past, present, future, intertwined. ideals and shattered ideals. pedestals and sink-holes. opposites and similarities. hell and salvation, isolation and connection. I take that back - it's never hell. it could never be hell - hell to me is the complete alienation and apartness from God and other people. painting is connecting in such a way, it can be prayer, or it can be tormenting at times - but even then, it is still paint, which I love, it is still creation. even the destruction of form is in a sense creation, because out of the destruction comes more.
"Maybe so...
but the fact is, you didn't want to"
- from the movie Capote
these lines are lingering with me, as is the movie. so dark and psychologically gripping, intense. those lines can and do apply to so much.
it's so wrong to me that the death penalty is still being used today. ridiculous. I'd like to dive more into this. make some work about it.
I'm floating through this dark head space on this colder night of creeping Fall. It's stealing away the summer days that I have very much slept through and been indifferent toward. the cooler air and cloudy skies are a bit soothing but also dig into a certain sadness that is ever present for me; I can never quite shake it. I think it is the sadness of humanity's suffering, and things that I can not quite change... or can I? so many people who need help, a world that needs saving... from ourselves, mostly. that dark part of ourselves that each of us has and fights against, or tries to.
Off to make more chamomile tea to soothe my soul with warmth in this shifting space of the reality that I am in...
chamomile tea brings me back to being with my mother, in my childhood home, warm light, Greek honey, and the love of family. It also brings other feelings that I would need more than a few immediate words to describe. perhaps I can't describe it with words. perhaps I should try. it is my childhood. that is what I have to dive into next in my writing, I always felt that I grew up differently than most others around me, felt alienated, felt that it was difficult to share my experience because really, who except me or my immediate family would understand? it was embarrassing? - very much so. (not always, of course. but often. and often quite wonderful, with many blessings and much love!)
thinking of things such as the death penalty makes me wonder if I really should be focusing on larger societal / humanitarian issues with my art - is my work becoming too abstract and self-referencing to make much sense to others...? (what exactly is it doing?... )the endless plight( what am I doing by creating it? I am devoting my life to artmaking - have limited time, resources, and a voice - and I believe, a responsibility to do something "good" with these things.) I have to continue on the paths I am on currently - I am saying things with this work for sure but what exactly is it I am saying... it is not explicitly political or anything of that nature. It's deeply internal and a passageway through the subconscious, a navigation of formal elements in painting, space, time, movement, associations of form, relationships, concepts... it isn't speaking out about a particular issue as much as it is investigating, navigating, interacting, exploring... tying together. Would I make more of an "impact" or "difference" if I were to scream loudly about issues such as the death penalty, oppression, social injustice, inequality, plasticity, consumerism... I have an endless vat of rage that I could easily tap into and create work about all of these things and more, in a variety of ways. But for some reason I have this deep and internal need (or maybe self-serving want/desire?) to create the things I am creating now. A part of me just stated within me somewhere that I may have no choice but to create what I feel the "need" to create right now.
Maybe that's not it at all.
Maybe it's just that I simply enjoy what I am painting now. I enjoy painting. It's my solitude, it is my passageway, it is my escape and at times a painful almost ascetic exercise, it provides me with emotional and spiritual healing, it is a catharsis and a stream of consciousness at times... a channeling and a screaming rage. it is color, which I love. it is space, which I play with. I'm enjoying that one thing can be balanced to read in different ways at once. it's narcissism? it's journeying through the self which then has the capability of being more universal - personal/universal, universal/personal. it's endless possibilities and fields of color flowers. it's dreams, it's nightmares. it is past, present, future, intertwined. ideals and shattered ideals. pedestals and sink-holes. opposites and similarities. hell and salvation, isolation and connection. I take that back - it's never hell. it could never be hell - hell to me is the complete alienation and apartness from God and other people. painting is connecting in such a way, it can be prayer, or it can be tormenting at times - but even then, it is still paint, which I love, it is still creation. even the destruction of form is in a sense creation, because out of the destruction comes more.