Month: February 2017

I’ve just received word , via text , that a dear friend has just died, cut down far too short. Her death, though expected, stunned me to tears and  has struck me once again by the unfairness of the inevitable. Unfairness is probably a foolish thing to say, it is the bargain life makes with the eternal. On my jog yesterday I was delighted by the glossy virgin leaves of the pear trees, providing a lovely frame to the sweet tender blossoms. But interspersed between the verdure I saw the withered and desiccated leaves of last spring, clinging on just a bit longer. Perhaps holding on, making sure the next generation was established. 

This curbside philosophizing made me chuckle and shudder all at once; I’m the brown leaf and what am I doing fretting about the petty worries of my day? The fresh sprouts of time forever surging forward. I had been fretting, as is my wont, by yet another unfavorable review, this time, that my work was too dense, too time consuming to experience. The critic felt it would take twenty hours to discern and hadn’t the interest or the inclination to do so. That of course stung, but what I realized was, this is MY vision, my interest, my art; not hers. And although the conversation with the world at large is of vital importance, perhaps a fundamental impetus for art making; the conversation with my soul is paramount. I make dense, frequently incomprehensible art (even to myself), it is intuitive and flawed but true.

Today I am feeling the passage of time acutely, with my friend’s death, a nascent cold/flu/bubonic plague looming and most recently a loss of a tooth. That tooth, an emblem of youth, of green vitality , now missing , forces the mirror of life upon me.

Upon hearing of my friend’s death I rushed to the studio, and although it is St. Valentine’s Day and I should say my greatest passion is for my dear David (and it is ), my greatest love today, my most pressing desire, was in making. Making flawed, imperfect art that I hope at times resonates.

Happy St.Valentine’s Day.