Dear readers –
Some of you know that I carry two diseases of the retinas. Usually I can move quite briskly through the day but not in the past few weeks. For a while I couldn’t read even the biggest font — yesterday I began piecing together words in a magazine article. It’s great!
So please bear with me as I make my way back into a Green As Sky world. Green as grass, green as spring, green as summer. Home free.
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New situation, you gain insights. My favorite is that when an artist can’t connect to the world of printed words she can grab a National Geographic of any vintage, turn it upside down and see on the visuals as abstract compositions. Color masses. distribution of tones. I find I have (at least) two visual minds. One keeps me from stubbing my toe in a world full of chairs, the second sees impractically, in the terms my art has led me to weight what I sight. [riTcky wording used for emphasis.]
I think of Mondrian here. How while painting trees he begann to seize on the grid-like way branches interlaced. Is this how a muse works? In the world we’re so carefully and carelessly taught how to see, we notice another aspect that tickles our attention. We play with this, maybe sketch it on napkins, maybe try imposing mental right angles on the limbs of a peach tree. Your path opens up, you take it.
Circling back to us being taught how to see. In an industrial landscape — oil derricks, electrical poles — I’d always felt affronted. One day I worked to view the scene as an engaging composition. And it was there. Fell into place, boom boom boom, freed from political blinders. Which rid me of feeling.bad.
Must stop for here. The words flow freely but the eyes are running in the wrong shoes.