About Obsessive Behavior

Jonathan Franzen, the novelist, was quoted in the Time magazine, August 23 cover article: “There were a couple of years when I could enjoy blowing off a workday and going bird-watching,” he says, “followed by some years in which I came to realize that because my purpose on earth is to write novels, I am actually freer when I am chained to a project; freer from guilt, anxiety, boredom, anger, purposelessness.”

He describes it simply and well; it hit home. I am embarrassed sometimes by my reluctance, often inability, to take time off. I would rather work. I suspect it will appear that I want to seem virtuous. Not at all, quite the contrary. It is a completely selfish dedication to doing what gives me peace. I learned about how it feels to be totally delivered unto the task at hand when I was seventeen years old and I was carving an unborn child from marble. See About the Bliss of Art for that story. Now in my waning years this compelling focus delivers me from the slings and arrows of the day. I read the newspaper in the morning and am endlessly amazed by the constant reports of misery and tragedy. It is difficult to ignore the lives of others. Of course, there is too, always the threat of disaster striking close. And in a not terribly eventful and blessed life as mine there are lists of things to do, calls to make, obligations one is remiss in dealing with.

But, oh the joy of submerging into the struggle of a painting! This blue here? That line more prominent? More space between these elements? Decisions requiring attention, problems that have a solution because they are about choices I can make. I am in charge. It matters little that I often grapple to weariness to get it all right. It is not about life or death. It is about just my life.

The image above is Yellow-Green ©2010,  Giclée Print,  size varies. For information or to purchase any of the paintings on this site, please email Joan.

About Beauty

The topic chosen for discussion by a group of artists I will meet with soon is “beauty”.

As my thoughts turned to the subject of beauty, “ugly” came to mind. As there are many variations amongst cultures and within cultures, and within the history of one culture, about what constitutes beauty, the same is true for ugly. I have stopped watching a number of television series because of scenarios too ugly for my taste. I have gotten used to violence on the screen but some shows became too graphic for me while they continued to be popular. Some people's thresholds for ugly are higher than mine. I read a book recently by an Afghan who described a beautiful woman whom the protagonist loved as having a most graceful hooked nose; one that might have seen the cosmetic surgeon’s hammer had she wanted to be found attractive in this culture that I was raised in. Marilyn Monroe would not be slim enough by today's standards if they are to be judged by clothing models.

My mother made me a dress when I was a very little girl of a fabric called “dotted Swiss”. It was printed with small, delicate and pale violets. More than anything else that I remember wearing, I loved that dress. And today when I see something — a wrapping paper, wallpaper, a painting, anything that looks like those violets, not only do I find it beautiful, I find it movingly beautiful.

I am going to refrain from drawing any conclusions here, and I will not write much more as I like to keep my posts appealingly short. I might go back to this one day because the thoughts about beauty (and ugliness) keep coming. For now I will leave you with some favored quotes:

Francis Bacon (the philosopher/writer, not the painter): “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion”.
And along that line, Havelock Ellis: The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.

Anais Nin: We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.

Petrarch: Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

Buckminster Fuller: When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

And finally, Jean Kerr: I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?

Allegiance, the collage/painting pictured above done in 2000, is about putting two oranges together to make them appear even more beautiful than they could be on their own.

To see miniature paintings available for sale, please click on Tinies and Butterflies.