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The Artist’s
Almanac
October 2006
download and print this installment as
a PDF
(you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open this file, you can
get
it here free)
But thought’s the slave of life,
and life time’s fool;
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.
- Shakespeare, Henry IV
The pace quickens.
Thanksgiving and Christmas loom. Halloween has its costs and duties.
We schedule football and soccer trips, and fill our calendars
through January.
We live in a culture
that traps us into doing too many things, taking on too many
responsibilities, facing too many choices, and saying yes to too
many opportunities. We are overwhelmed by plans that cannot be
carried out, appointments that cannot be honored and deadlines that
cannot be met. This is the new poverty - we are a time-poor society.
Our todays are hostages to our tomorrows.
We know what time it
is, but not what time is.
But October, in her
serene beauty, tells us, very gently - every season has its end.
October
holds her breath now, blues the distant hills, and tells us, See,
see what I can do.
We dare not waste a
day now. If we had the choice, this would be the present I would
choose to live in. October asks of us, what have you done with this
gorgeous day I have given you?
The artist has the
answer in his art, for Art is the eternal present. The artist is
privileged to go there, while he paints. But this privilege comes at
a cost – Guilt. The painter who wastes an October day not painting
has killed a bit of himself, and knows it. For inspiration and the
passion to paint are perishable, and cannot be preserved, except in
paint.
A true work of art
lives outside of time. Cezanne’s peaches are forever ripe and the
wind, sun and stars forever swirl through Van Gogh’s Provence. Even
his stone houses seem to tossing on the land like ships on the sea,
fragile and flowing with the tides of time.
As we on our planet
hurl through space, we seek our anchorage to the familiar hills
surrounding us. Yet the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius reminds us:
Think often of the speed with
which all that is and comes to be
passes away and vanishes …
Scarcely anything is stable, even that which is close at hand.
Dwell too, on the infinite gulf of the past and the future,
In which all things vanish away.
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