Knowing Things

I wrote this in April 2009 but for some reason never published it... I don't remember what events led to its creation, but I came across it this morning and really liked the ideas...




It is amazing that you can look so intently at something, absorb it in all its lines, shapes and colors, reproduce it even, then come back the next day and see that this is smaller, or this is larger, this angle is too steep or not steep enough, the dark here isn't as dark as the one there. I'm working on a still life drawing of two bowls and a small pot, and at the end of each day I leave the studio thinking things are right. Then I show up the next day...

This morning I was thinking about some friends and I made the connection that people too are not as easily understood as one would think, their true and accurate form not known. You can study their lines and movements, follow the trail of their actions, watch their expressions and listen intently to the words coming from their mouths--you come to believe you have them figured out, but you don't. You put your own interpretation on their thoughts or actions, see them through your eyes and coming from your experiences, not theirs. And although we think we know one another, most of us know only the person presented to the world. Even with family. Or perhaps especially with family, because we presume to know them better.

I don't think this is a bad thing. It is what it is. We are each the sum of our own experiences, and most of the emotions attached to those experiences bloom from within and for reasons we may not even know ourselves. You have to physically be a pot and hold it's memories to truly know it.

We should continue to study nature--pots and people--and remind ourselves that life is a series of corrections, both as an artist rendering a subject faithfully and as a person remembering that in our interactions with others, the good and bad, we are only human.