July 29, 2022 Weekly Musings
Posted on July 29 2022
Announcements:
Rolling Stones III and As The Wind Blows Accepted Into 2022 West Texas Watercolor Society Fall Show
Rolling Stones III and As The Wind Blows have been accepted into the Juried 2022 West Texas 60th Watercolor Society Fall Show
The Juror of Selection and Awards is Karen Knutson, TWSA, SDWS, RRWS, MTWS, NPWS, MNWS, and MOWS. Karen believes that painting should both be fun and have a strong sense of design.
September 2- October 29, 2022
Musings:
Reason
Featured image: Explore
Reason – we hear that word a lot lately. Reason is useful for when two things or more make choices and then are able to exist without problems or conflict. Reason is helpful to live a “reasonable” (ha ha) life. But reason is almost never useful for making discoveries and for exploring.
The Kaleidoscope Of Raw Reality
Featured image: Kaleidoscope Of Raw Reality: We Are So Small – Northern Lights
The ever-changing kaleidoscope of raw reality, when I begin a painting, would be overwhelming except for my ability to take the kaleidoscopic abstractions of flowing paint and pick out the parts in this flowing paint and put things back together again. Abstraction is real in the kaleidoscope of life and creating ourselves from the jumble of perceptions and sensations we receive every day. For me, the jumble of life and all of its parts are like creating myself as a work of art. I take all the jumble of perceptions and sensations and sort them out then the“me” emerges. The same thing happens in a work of art 90% of the time. But the work I just finished, “We Are So Small – Northern Lights”, I began the usual way that I begin my work with watercolor washes. As the colors began to flow, and then they dried, I found I just didn’t want to do anything else with the work. The vastness of the flowing colors was able to make a statement without me. Sad as I was, and hard as it was for me as the artist to take the parts of this kaleidoscope and work with them, the creator in me said, “It is finished.” With this painting the abstraction was enough.
Forward Thinking
Featured image: Forward Thinking
A vision, like an idea or a concept, is a pre-rational, pre-reasonable mental, intellectual act. It is what we sense or feel before we have created any systematic reasoning that could be called a theory. It is something that happens before reasoning and rationality.
Big words, so here is an example, I have been reading and watching a movie on da Vinci. What an amazing person. Every time that I need to reaffirm my thoughts on creative thinking and progressive logic, I turn to thinkers like da Vinci or Einstein. Both were amazing men. Da Vinci’s creative thinking and deductive reasoning is what we need more of today. In da Vinci’s time he was the Elan Musk of our time. Both took the tools of their times and visualized the future and what it could be. They allowed themselves to think differently and weren’t bothered by the fact that their thinking was different from that of others. Their forward thinking had nothing to do with what they could afford. It just had to do with their visions. The same goes for Jeff Bezos. I remember when his vision was just to sell books – he called his company Amazon.
All of these men thought differently and progressively. Their visions were about ideas and concepts. They were artisans in their thinking. I say that because that is how I believe artists should think, with creativity, and forward thinking. As an artist I am not a da Vinci, and Einstein, a Elan Musk or a Jeff Bezos – but I sure try to think like them. I don’t know what their beginning visions were, but I do know that they were not uncomfortable thinking differently.
Leonardo da Vinci the Artista
Featured image: Visions Are Life Maps Of Me
Leonardo da Vinci the Artista, was always thinking differently and about possibilities. He was never part of a “group think.” Frequently, he was chosen as a last resort to participate in a problem solving situation because he wasn’t part of a “group thing.” Yet, being chosen as a last resort was what made him strive and struggle to maintain his personal self and identity and to be his own person. Da Vinci knew who he was and he never surrendered that self.
When you watch a movie do you ever identify with one of the characters? I do, especially with the current documentaries and movies on Leonardo da Vinci. I so relate to him. I’m frequently not asked to participate, chosen in group think problem solving situations, and always the last as a child to be chosen when teams were chosen for a baseball team, always last in a spelling bee, and always the second best friend to a best friend.
I frequently wonder if there are other artists out there, thinking differently as da Vinci did? And I wonder if that is an important part of what art is and how it is defined. True, there are those out there who call themselves artists - they are technical masters. An excellent comparison to how da Vinci problem solved would be Rembrant. Rembrant was a realist – so was da Vinci. But, Rembrant didn’t move outside his comfortable borders, while da vinci had no trouble moving outside of a border. The art Rembrant practiced could be called techne – and the art da Vinci practiced doesn’t really have a classification. Does art need classification? I believe not.
New Works:
