Facets of a Diamond – Blog
Look around at the paintings in the museum and ask yourself:
Why were they created?
Why do they exist?May they answer your Basic Question:
Why was I created?
Why do I exist?In the room where I paint there are three Chinese gongshi, scholars’ rocks, as a tribute and a remembrance to my Chinese painting guides, members of the literati, the scholar-painters. It is as if I am triangulated by the Energy emanating from the rocks, from them as the rocks.
When I was
Verlaine counseled Debussy that “nothing is more precious than half-light in which the undefined and the precise meet … What we want is nuance not colour – the nuance that weds the dream to dream.”
Yes, I take color photographs – very many. For the color and its reality. But especially for portraits, I greatly prefer
Issa wrote that it does not matter what you say to a dead tree.
Of course, not what you say, but Where it comes from.
And, having photographed – that is to say, intimately related to – so many apparently dead trees, I have come to believe that, in their own way, they are alive. As sculpture
Give up the world of suffering!
Come, come to your Muse of Love.
I will help you along the way with instances of Beauty.with apologies to Issa
(trans. Sam Hamill)We should be able to go into any art museum, look around and exclaim, “Buddhas, Buddhas, Everywhere!” Not just the paintings but, inspired by them, all the people.
It has been said of Emerson that he regarded every moment as Epiphanic. So he would have loved, would have felt loved, by any painting.
But we non-Emersons need
It could be said that if I first find my Soul I can then find my mother’s – and others. Or, if I first find hers I can then find mine – and others.
I prefer the second way, for it seems altruistic – especially if we primarily find her
“Scattered flowers are gone forever.”
— Issa
(trans. Sam Hamill)As, too, my paintings.
Gratitude is the Soul at work.
So whatever you did for the grateful sufferer, basically, it was healing.