the Profession of Art is Odd Indeed

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Study for 5 Cherries

Being an artist is truly one of the odder professions. Yes, older too, but what I wrote was oDDer. Imagine a librarian saying he/she needed to start meditating in order to draw forth the source of their inspiration. Imagine an accountant contemplating giving up being an accountant because it was too hard to know how good an accountant they are when compared to other accountants or to the history of accounting. Imagine a plumber studying the work of other plumbers and quitting their job because every type of plumbing had already been invented.
Of course all professions might focus on constant improvement, or working as a meditation itself.

My brother is a physicist and he probably falls into most of the artist related rantings and mood swings and soul to universe searching (but then, Physicists are an odd bunch as well).

At any rate I was reading this facebook discussion line asking each artist to describe a moment of 'awe' in which they viewed another artists work and in 'misreading' it or reacting to it (either because it was so spectacular or so horrible) created their own path in response. It was insinuated that this would be somewhat torturous, and that artists in general are on and off again tortured by their carrier choice. Perhaps. Its certainly true for myself. And yet we are driven as artists to continue through these ups and downs, because we must create. imagine our accountant feeling they must add numbers or go insane and they would look a bit daft themselves.

Meanwhile... I am branching out in the studio. Literally!- branches have entered my paintings. Or rather they are shooting forth from the wood surface and other paintings in the form of boxes are hanging from them. The painting/sculpture, called...probably..."Five Cherries", is based on images from a poem I wrote. And just you wait, kind reader- up next- Ill take you to the forth dimension...my noggin is spinning with ideas.