Monday, July 14, 2014

An Ideal Heaven for Curious Minds

     There are so darned many unanswered questions. Why do we do what we do? Like blurt out personal feelings to total strangers, lie for no reason and overreact to imagined slights? Don’t you really want to know? Why is it so hard to keep both socks? Where did that $100 bill go? What does disease mean or is it just random bad luck? How on Earth can we be so loving and so hateful nearly in the same breath? What flips that switch? Or why did I blindly go along with my ex-husband's suggestion to name a cute little budgie Desenex after an anti-fungal cream when I thought it was idiotic?

      It is stupidly unfair that there are so many big and small mysteries over the course of a lifetime. What I sincerely hope for is that when we die we can go to a big, beautiful place called ‘The Library of What the Fuck’. There we can find truthful answers for all those times we had to ask, "What the fuck?" while on Earth. I want the whole truth, a comfortable chair (cloud?), good coffee and eternity if necessary to look it all up. Before I had a chance to surf the web I had this notion that I’d be able to find meaningful answers on the web. While how to paint a car, choose a camera or find a purebred hamster may be informative there are few answers to what really makes us tick. Why didn’t I love men who were good for me and cling to the ones who were not? Why don’t I want to work out knowing how good I feel after? Why is impressionistic painting so difficult when it looks so easy? 
     The second painting I did of a boy holding a cat I can clearly remember a moment of feeling freedom with paint. It flowed off the brush effortlessly while I added the background weeds with a few perfect strokes. That it happened so well on my second painting is a mystery. It has rarely happened since and not for lack of effort. In my experience painting is usually a series of accidents, corrected until they look right. Impeccable control with a brush has proved frustratingly elusive. Thanks Goya and Thiebaud for such fine examples, but how did you do it? Or more precisely, how can I? It is another question for my ideal library, but it’s not over yet and today is another hopeful day.  

Slippahs, from the series 90 Paintings in 90 Days, 2011
evidence of effort