As I'm sitting here this morning a documentary about John Singer Sargent is playing in the background. A renowned portraitist he made his way past the Salon in Paris and the patrons of Europe and America. He actually renounced portraiture and began landscapes in both water color and oil-the critics accused him of being a tourist. Sargent was the quiet fellow who used odd composition, insolence in poses, and a grand mastery of the medium he felt a responsibility to his talent-his gift.
Growing up in the house of an artist I saw how a white gesso canvas came to life, the sketches, the still life, the scenery, the person(s) took form after a time it seemed best to stop. To step back and let the painting be, so it seems is the case with writing something, it swirls about in my mind, it troubles me and eventually I have to give it voice of some sort. Honestly I write as much for me as anyone else, though I appreciate your attentions and response they are a blessing. I feel the amateur most of the time but that really isn't the point, it's the words and thoughts that mean something. Of course the frame, the page or the screen contain an object, something of interest of focus but it isn't all there is to be seen or said about the matter, just what needs expression at that time.
On screen now in the documentary is the scene he painted of blinded soldiers in the First World War; the line of walking wounded, eyes blinded are a foreground for the incongruity of a soccer game in a peaceful landscape that recedes in the distance. Sometimes life is a gallery that we exist in possibly oblivious to the hours that were spent in creating the objects de art briefly viewed by us patrons. I walked this morning on a planet ages old and saw starlight that has streamed across time and space to decorate the gray twilight of dawn. The air I breathe itself is a history book, several molecules of air that Jesus respired pass through my body.
The gallery of life has tragedies, happiness, and lots of stuff in between, if we are aware of our place in this existence of our presence in a dynamic of natural and spiritual we may survive it.
John
Growing up in the house of an artist I saw how a white gesso canvas came to life, the sketches, the still life, the scenery, the person(s) took form after a time it seemed best to stop. To step back and let the painting be, so it seems is the case with writing something, it swirls about in my mind, it troubles me and eventually I have to give it voice of some sort. Honestly I write as much for me as anyone else, though I appreciate your attentions and response they are a blessing. I feel the amateur most of the time but that really isn't the point, it's the words and thoughts that mean something. Of course the frame, the page or the screen contain an object, something of interest of focus but it isn't all there is to be seen or said about the matter, just what needs expression at that time.
On screen now in the documentary is the scene he painted of blinded soldiers in the First World War; the line of walking wounded, eyes blinded are a foreground for the incongruity of a soccer game in a peaceful landscape that recedes in the distance. Sometimes life is a gallery that we exist in possibly oblivious to the hours that were spent in creating the objects de art briefly viewed by us patrons. I walked this morning on a planet ages old and saw starlight that has streamed across time and space to decorate the gray twilight of dawn. The air I breathe itself is a history book, several molecules of air that Jesus respired pass through my body.
The gallery of life has tragedies, happiness, and lots of stuff in between, if we are aware of our place in this existence of our presence in a dynamic of natural and spiritual we may survive it.
John
posted by John R. Jones at 5:39 AM
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