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Spaghetti Carbonara |
Regardless. Here I am midway through characters like Luca Spaghetti and phrases about genius Italian culture like,
The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work... The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement... Anyone with a talent for happiness can do this, not only the rich.If you've read my blog you know that the beauty of doing nothing is a wonderful goal I do wish to achieve,
but the thing that caught my attention most was the idea of happiness actually being a talent.
As if you could be born with this talent or not born with it. As if there could maybe even be the possibility of learning how to do it better, or do it at all.
It got me thinking about my own happiness or unhappiness. And then of course, how does this translate into my artwork...
I don't know if I'd consider myself a happy person or if I have a talent for making happy paintings... but lo and behold I just found an entry in my journal from last December telling myself how happy I was and that I thought I was actually making happy paintings! Who knew.
Do I even want to be making happy paintings?
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"abstract painting #7" |
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"abstract painting #9" two paintings I imagine I labeled at the time as happy |
Ms. Gilbert remarks that,
Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that's not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment.As the two words arts and entertainment are so entwined in American culture, it doesn't seem that far off that visual art is a form of entertainment. Not that the pleasure you get from a wonderful piece of art could really be considered entertainment, but at the same time you need to want to spend most evenings enjoying its company.
So then the question is, do people want to hang happier paintings on their walls??
Death and murder make up a huge part of our entertainment as well.
I imagine that there must be a comparable number of melancholy art collectors as there are happy ones, right?
I for one have no intention of choosing my paint colors based on statistical data. I do admit, however, that I spend a lot of time thinking about things like this. In fact it crosses my mind each time I unload a very murky brownish mustard color off my paintbrush. I am a painter who loves color and puts a lot of meaning into the colors I choose and the emotional effects they will have on the viewer. So I can't really help it.
Anyway it turns out, and I am happy to report, that in the theme of trying new things, along with planning my trip to Italy, the crisis of happy or unhappy and brown versus blue is currently being solved, at least temporarily, with plans for a new series of paintings... all in black and white.
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"ADT" what will turn out to be one of the last paintings I made before the new black and white series |