Less than a month away
13/03/08 07:45
Observances
from PaintOut Artist, Peter Carolin:
Landscape painting is about slowing down in an age where everything is speeding up. It takes time to appreciate beauty. One needs to stop and take a long look at things to understand them. It may take a whole hour for a cloud to float across the sky. Sometimes, the sky does nothing all day, like a person too depressed to get out of bed.
But that person is beautiful. Afraid to get out of bed...not wanting to live in this rat race....chasing after a pot of gold.
Wanting life to have more meaning, but afraid to act. Wait, wait, waiting for your ship to come in.
When it does, it is full of color! The most plain, blah day can have the most beautiful sunset. How ironic. Perhaps people can be that way, too. Without anything flashy, without a pot of gold. Just the rainbow. The rainbow is inside each seemingly depressed, blah person. Each person is the treasure.
It is a treasure to see the king of the swamp slowly floating. The lotusses slowly openning. An insect softly singing. Color is nothing, just as the rainbow is the treasure.
If a person slows down enough at a big empty space like the praire, what appears to be nothing there seems to be a tiny motion within.
Knowing what you feel. Going inside oneself without pain, shame, worry and fear. Knowing who and what you really care about, and what makes you happy, takes some quiet time alone to slow down. Standing every day at the prairie feels like that moment at thanksgiving when one wonders what are you thankful for, except there is nothing new, nothing going on, nobody won a national championship, and you haven't gone any place special all year. You are forced to appreciate the most basic things, like color and gentle movement. Things that change so slowly that you can draw them, like a gentle breeze.
What is color? Color is nothing. You can't eat it. You can't buy anything with it. It's totally impractical. It is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
It is the rainbow.
I'm the kind of person who hurries up in the morning, and at the end, but really slows down in the middle. I am eager to begin each task; then I pace myself, savor, and enjoy the task, working sideways, taking longer to complete it than it should; and then I have extra energy to sprint to the finish, to keep going hard and strong in the fourth quarter, to give 110%. I like my style, and enjoy my life. It seems out of pace with most people, but not everyone. There are several slow, conservative, and meditative people out there. I wonder if my way of being shows up in my artwork?
Landscape painting is about slowing down in an age where everything is speeding up. It takes time to appreciate beauty. One needs to stop and take a long look at things to understand them. It may take a whole hour for a cloud to float across the sky. Sometimes, the sky does nothing all day, like a person too depressed to get out of bed.
But that person is beautiful. Afraid to get out of bed...not wanting to live in this rat race....chasing after a pot of gold.
Wanting life to have more meaning, but afraid to act. Wait, wait, waiting for your ship to come in.
When it does, it is full of color! The most plain, blah day can have the most beautiful sunset. How ironic. Perhaps people can be that way, too. Without anything flashy, without a pot of gold. Just the rainbow. The rainbow is inside each seemingly depressed, blah person. Each person is the treasure.
It is a treasure to see the king of the swamp slowly floating. The lotusses slowly openning. An insect softly singing. Color is nothing, just as the rainbow is the treasure.
If a person slows down enough at a big empty space like the praire, what appears to be nothing there seems to be a tiny motion within.
Knowing what you feel. Going inside oneself without pain, shame, worry and fear. Knowing who and what you really care about, and what makes you happy, takes some quiet time alone to slow down. Standing every day at the prairie feels like that moment at thanksgiving when one wonders what are you thankful for, except there is nothing new, nothing going on, nobody won a national championship, and you haven't gone any place special all year. You are forced to appreciate the most basic things, like color and gentle movement. Things that change so slowly that you can draw them, like a gentle breeze.
What is color? Color is nothing. You can't eat it. You can't buy anything with it. It's totally impractical. It is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
It is the rainbow.
I'm the kind of person who hurries up in the morning, and at the end, but really slows down in the middle. I am eager to begin each task; then I pace myself, savor, and enjoy the task, working sideways, taking longer to complete it than it should; and then I have extra energy to sprint to the finish, to keep going hard and strong in the fourth quarter, to give 110%. I like my style, and enjoy my life. It seems out of pace with most people, but not everyone. There are several slow, conservative, and meditative people out there. I wonder if my way of being shows up in my artwork?