learning to see
Tattoo design for a dear friend of mine. (By the way: the tattoo artist did a phenomenal job and the final piece looks wonderful!)
I love the active brushwork and sensitivity to color that happened in the impressionist and post-impressionist periods of art history. Impressionism was all about capturing light, color, and movement in a way that was true to the human experience of sight, turning away from painting tradition in an attempt to create images that more accurately reflected the brevity, energy, and complexity of everyday moments. Life is that way, and I think that’s why impressionist art is compelling to so many people.
A few of my favorite moments from the Impressionism Gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago. Courtesy of Renoir, Monet, Morisot, Cross, Manet, Van Gogh, and Monticelli:
Although I stayed home for most of spring break this year, I was able to take two day trips. It was quite nice to get out of town for awhile, see friends, take in athletics and arts, and enjoy a bit of that ‘road trip’ feel for a couple of days.
Early in the week, my sister and I headed east to Cedarville, Ohio to watch a friend and high school teammate of mine play softball. The car-ride views of rural Indiana and Ohio were peaceful and quiet. The breeze was chilly, but the skies were sunny and blue – the perfect afternoon for a doubleheader.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard
This sentence by Annie Dillard makes me squirm every time I read it. This life is all we have. It’s made up of days and I want to use every one of them the best way that I can, doing things that are worthwhile, putting together a string of days that make up a live worth living. Since much of my day is habit-filled, it then follows that I should care about what I habitually do. And be ready to make non-routine decisions of life – well, with intention, and without fear – as they come. Continue reading “Thoughts on Habits (Part Three)”
This Psychology Today article by Chris Guillebeau brings to mind things of habit and energy and decision-making that I’ve been reading and writing about this semester. It’s entitled “Reducing Decisions to Focus Better” and starts off with part of a letter to artists from Robert Genn:
Choreographer Twyla Tharp’s Creative Habit, describes her morning routine of rising early and going through the same morning rituals; same coffee, same bun. She puts on the same leotards, goes down the same elevator to the same street corner, puts her arm up in the air and gets into the first cab that comes along.
By the time she gets to the studio she has made no significant decisions. Stepping out onto the dance floor, her dancers await. It’s eight in the morning and her first decision is yet to come. It will be a creative one.
We painters also need to save our decision-making for things of importance. “Don’t,” as they say, “sweat the small stuff.” I figure an average 11″ x 14″ uses up several hundred thousand decisions. Compound that over a day of painting and it’s in the millions. Even the small decisions in a painting, some of them so micro and seemingly insignificant, are the building blocks of what we are to become.
(emphasis mine)
Two responses: This makes so much sense. / Why I am I so bad at it? Continue reading “Thoughts on Habits (Part Two)”
