Saturday, January 1, 2005
I love the first day of the year. It feels so full of possibilities. I had the weekend to myself because my daughter, Sarina, was with my mom for the new year weekend. I didn’t even go outside my apartment for the entire day. All I wanted to do was lock myself inside and create. I feel like my mind is bursting with ideas, practically exploding. I’m desperate to get it all outside of my head and into a finished form before the energy dissipates. With the creation of the Bohemian Art Studio, it’s like I’ve finally found a canvas on which to create my masterpiece. Now every idea is exploding in my mind, wanting to come into this world.
I started painting two years ago. But sometimes I’ve held back for months at a time, as if I were afraid to touch the brushes and paints for fear that what was in my mind wouldn’t be translated clearly enough onto the canvas. I think that’s a problem for many artists, especially painters and writers. We have to let go of the fear and just let the playful creative child come out to have fun. When I do let her out, she feels such joy in the process, it’s like the best drug I could possibly imagine, better than any drug out there because there are no negative side-effects, just a beautiful work of art – or at worse, an experiment that didn’t quite come out as expected.
Building the website has made me even more excited about painting because I want to post the images on the internet for the whole world to see. It’s exciting to be part of the process of creating art and sharing it with the world. I have a total of thirty canvases right now. Ten of them are at a friend’s house. I like to go over there occasionally and we paint together. The rest are in my studio and nine of them need to be finished. So I spent most of the day painting. I worked on six of the canvases in progress.
Generally I work that way because of the different effects of painting while the paint on the canvas is wet or dry. If I change colors while it’s wet, the colors that touch each other will blend together. Sometimes I want this effect, but sometimes I don’t. If I don’t, I have to let the canvas dry before starting with a new color.
While I painted, I listened to Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell on tape. I’d been wanting to read it for years, but I never would have had the patience for it. I’m glad I listened to it, mainly to learn more about the history of that time and place – he was in Spain in 1937 and 1937 – but I found the whole mindset to be very difficult (or impossible) to assimilate. The revolutionary fervor of the anarchists was exciting, but in the end their revolution was demolished. All that was left was useless fighting, killing, and destruction of war. Even as Orwell describes it himself, the so-called “fascist” enemies that he was shooting at and trying to kill were just working-class men like himself. They had been conscripted to fight for the fascists. And in many cases the young men fighting were as young as eleven and twelve years old. I wondered what was really gained from it all in the end. I guess if anything, it made me realize that if we want to create a better world, we’ll get a lot farther through peaceful evolution --though it may be slow -- than through violent revolution, which many times leads to dictatorship rather than freedom. Anyway, after I finished listening to the book on tape, I spent a little time writing a review for the website.
I was still painting as the light from the window was waning. It was becoming difficult to see what I was doing. I got up to wash my hands, which somehow always end up covered with paint. Just a few minutes later when I returned to the room where I had been painting, it was nearly dark -- impossible to paint by natural light. By then I was tired, having worked hard all day. I closed the curtains and lit a candle and laid down for a bit of rest.
I had the feeling of wanting to be alone, like a wild animal in my den. I can relate to wild animals because sometimes I feel like a wild animal myself. I want to stay hidden away from the humans. I like being enclosed in my den where no one can see me or bother me. I don’t want to hear the sound of the computer. I don’t want to see the electric light. I just want the peaceful darkness of evening with the warm flicker of the candle-light.
I started painting two years ago. But sometimes I’ve held back for months at a time, as if I were afraid to touch the brushes and paints for fear that what was in my mind wouldn’t be translated clearly enough onto the canvas. I think that’s a problem for many artists, especially painters and writers. We have to let go of the fear and just let the playful creative child come out to have fun. When I do let her out, she feels such joy in the process, it’s like the best drug I could possibly imagine, better than any drug out there because there are no negative side-effects, just a beautiful work of art – or at worse, an experiment that didn’t quite come out as expected.
Building the website has made me even more excited about painting because I want to post the images on the internet for the whole world to see. It’s exciting to be part of the process of creating art and sharing it with the world. I have a total of thirty canvases right now. Ten of them are at a friend’s house. I like to go over there occasionally and we paint together. The rest are in my studio and nine of them need to be finished. So I spent most of the day painting. I worked on six of the canvases in progress.
Generally I work that way because of the different effects of painting while the paint on the canvas is wet or dry. If I change colors while it’s wet, the colors that touch each other will blend together. Sometimes I want this effect, but sometimes I don’t. If I don’t, I have to let the canvas dry before starting with a new color.
While I painted, I listened to Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell on tape. I’d been wanting to read it for years, but I never would have had the patience for it. I’m glad I listened to it, mainly to learn more about the history of that time and place – he was in Spain in 1937 and 1937 – but I found the whole mindset to be very difficult (or impossible) to assimilate. The revolutionary fervor of the anarchists was exciting, but in the end their revolution was demolished. All that was left was useless fighting, killing, and destruction of war. Even as Orwell describes it himself, the so-called “fascist” enemies that he was shooting at and trying to kill were just working-class men like himself. They had been conscripted to fight for the fascists. And in many cases the young men fighting were as young as eleven and twelve years old. I wondered what was really gained from it all in the end. I guess if anything, it made me realize that if we want to create a better world, we’ll get a lot farther through peaceful evolution --though it may be slow -- than through violent revolution, which many times leads to dictatorship rather than freedom. Anyway, after I finished listening to the book on tape, I spent a little time writing a review for the website.
I was still painting as the light from the window was waning. It was becoming difficult to see what I was doing. I got up to wash my hands, which somehow always end up covered with paint. Just a few minutes later when I returned to the room where I had been painting, it was nearly dark -- impossible to paint by natural light. By then I was tired, having worked hard all day. I closed the curtains and lit a candle and laid down for a bit of rest.
I had the feeling of wanting to be alone, like a wild animal in my den. I can relate to wild animals because sometimes I feel like a wild animal myself. I want to stay hidden away from the humans. I like being enclosed in my den where no one can see me or bother me. I don’t want to hear the sound of the computer. I don’t want to see the electric light. I just want the peaceful darkness of evening with the warm flicker of the candle-light.
posted by Evon Davis at 8:59 PM
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