Sometimes Wyeth; Sometimes Picasso

Looking for the Balance

You can waste an awful lot of time farting around for great occasions.  Pete and Henriette carried on the social game . . .all the artists I’ve ever known did it, except maybe Edward Hopper.

Andrew Wyeth

Please don’t interpret tonight’s post as a complaint–it isn’t.  Over the past decades, I have sought this indefinable center between the public and private side of an artful life.  I love living after the examples of the Thoreaus, the Hoppers and the Wyeths of the art and literary world, one steeped in creative solitude and contemplation.  Winters are especially wonderful for that (especially now that my furnace is repaired, after six days of frigid living!).  But I also ache for that creative collaboration among kindred spirits.  I love the cafes, the salons, the gatherings of inquisitive minds who feed off one another’s inspirations.  Tonight I am headed for the latter, a monthly salon gathering that I enjoy to the depths.  What I wish is that I could return to my studio and work on some art pieces after the meeting, because a number of ideas have been percolating with me over the past several days and I just cannot seem to catch a break to pursue them in solitude.  Part of my teaching load this semester is an online college course and tonight I have promised myself that all assignments submitted over this past week will be graded before I retire to bed–the students deserve that.  And so, perhaps tomorrow I will get back into the studio.  Tonight I can only salute those artists that managed to balance their solitude with their society. I am just as much charmed by Thoreau’s Walden cabin as I am Picasso’s Parisian Cafe Gerbois.  The former looked into the face of nature and drew unlimited resources; the latter listened to the poets, artists and philosophers in the cafe around him and transformed their ideas into art.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am never alone.

Tags: cafe, Henry David Thoreau, Pablo Picasso, salon, solitude