“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Look closely and you will see a heart.
This Valentines day, as I contemplate love, fear, risk and all that spring and winter brings me, l’ll take Mr. Saint-Exupéry’s advice and accept (stay open to) them all.
“I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.”
– Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Autumn is my favorite time of the year. Originally this painting was to be my representation of the Red-Light district in Frankfurt, Germany. Although for some odd reason it morphed into a painting of fall, or autumn, with all of the reds, yellows and browns – which I happened to finish on the first day of Spring. Odd..
“Zu keinem anderen Zeitpunkt (als Herbst) bewegt sich die Erde lassen sich eingeatmet werden in einem Geruch, der Reife Erde; in der Geruch ist in keiner Weise eine Verschlechterung an den Geruch des Meeres, bitter wo grenzt es an Geschmack und vieles mehr süss wie Honig, wo sie das Gefühl haben, dass sie den ersten Tönen. Mit Tiefe in sich, Dunkelheit, etwas von der schweren fast.”
“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
“Sensual and spiritual are not easy words to use; that there are, perhaps, not two
Aphrodites, but one Aphrodite with a Janus face.”
– E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey
I am preparing for my first one-woman art exhibit in June at a local gallery. This particular watercolor painting is rather large in size for me, but was always one of my favorite little sketches. I tend to paint and draw sensuality as exhibited here in “Janus.” With this show preparation comes an opening of insecurities, moods of every shade and a sweet time of self-reflection.
“Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”
― D.H. Lawrence
One Street Shy 