Musing Over Watershed Moments

Organizing Inventory for Upcoming Art Festival

There is the new movement.  There always has been the new movement and there always will be the new movement.  It is strange that a thing which comes as regularly as clockwork should always be a surprise.

In new movements the pendulum takes a great swing, charlatans crowd in, innocent apes follow, the masters make their successes and they make their mistakes as all pioneers must do.  It is necessary to pierce to the core to get at the value of a movement and not be confused by its sensational exterior.

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

As a perpetual idealist, I have known the exhilaration of recording a life filled with new movements, first movements, watershed moments, epiphanies and fresh beginnings.  As an aging student of history, I still feel my blood stirred when I read of pivot points in the history of ideas, art and litetature.  Though my blog posts have fallen off of late, my mind has not.  I am still recovering from a lingering illness, and the daily school routine along with the art business have taken all my prime time for a couple of weeks now.  I have been storing my daily ideas and readings in my handwritten journals, but have struggled to shape them into blog posts, with the daily schedule getting crazier.  I begin a three-day art festival tomorrow (Friday), and then go straight into a week-long plein air painting event, and enter into yet another art competition.  The following week, I close out school for the semester and launch a two-day watercolor workshop.  The week after, I launch a week-long watercolor workshop.  When I return for that, I begin teaching summer school for the duration of the summer.  No rest for the sick.  In the past forty-eight hours, I have framed five new watercolors, matted and sleeved about a dozen more, and have created over thirty new greeting cards with my watercolor images and newly-composed texts.

Despite all the industry, I am stirred up with new thoughts, new aspirations for painting and pursuing new compositions.  This three-day weekend, I will enjoy the art public as I sit in my booth during the festival (The Levitt Pavilion in Arlington, Texas opens its music season Friday night).  And during slack times, I will be recording new thoughts in the journal for what I wish to engage next.  On Monday, I get to pursue my painting passion with abandon (Paint Historic Waxahachie, Texas).  To consolidate my energy, I have been retiring to bed about three hours earlier than normal.  I just cannot seem to get enough rest, and still am not back to full strength.  I certainly don’t want to “cave” when the plein air season hits next week.  I’ll be doing school every day and painting every evening.

Following the spirit of Robert Henri, I am excited about this chance to “pierce to the core” of the movement that is currently carrying me, examining it for its value.  I’m ready to put this school term behind me and enjoy some quiet space in which I can scrutinize this art enterprise, and get a sense of what I am doing.  Below is one of the five new paintings I’ve framed.  I’m looking forward to putting it before the public view at the Levitt Pavilion tomorrow.

Warm, Proustian Screen Door Memories

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Tags: art festival, Robert Henri, The Art Spirit