You Wake Up

You Wake Up
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
20" x 30"

Later, you wake up beside your love,

the one who never had any conditions, 

the one who waited you out.  

-Eleanor Lerman, "Starfish"

An Easel

My New Easel

So despite having majored in art and spending years of my free time painting it was only a few weeks ago that I finally purchased an easel. I have been painting all of my canvases flat on the surface of a table. I don't know why I waited so long to get one. It felt like a guilty pleasure for some reason, a decadent waste of money.

Self-reliance is the theme of the week.

By a miracle of timing (and my kid being invited to two slumber parties) I was able to spend the weekend mediating by myself and figuring out what I want.
I am going to get better of taking care of myself.

Learn to cultivate your own garden.
-Voltaire

Friday Feature: William Blake

Songs of Innocence by William Blake

To see a world in a grain of sand,

and a Heaven in a wild flower,

hold infinity in the palm of your hand

and eternity in an hour.

-William Blake, Songs of Innocence

As with so many artists William Blake received little recognition in his own lifetime.  Perhaps that is due to the truism stated by Dr. Wayne Dyer that "Society has a tendency to honor its living conformists and its dead non-conformists." And Blake would have been a radical thinker even for our century. Some of his most intriguing ideas for me are his radical concepts on marriage and the roles of women. I agree with Blake that many marriages are little more than "legal prostitution" and that such agreements should be based on "sacred natural love" as opposed to duty.

And then there is the beauty of his mystical visions on the nature of spirituality...

He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.

Everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.

I am in you and you in me.

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

-Blake

Madonna and Child

Madonna and Child
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
16" x 20"

The mother and child reunion is only a motion away.

-Paul Simon

Take My Hand

Take My Hand
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
18" x 36"

Take my hand and lead me to salvation

Take my love for love is everlasting

To love another person is to see the face of God

-Kretzmer, Les Miserables

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, 
bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,The Little Prince

Friday Feature: Weird Al Yankovic

And now for something completely different...

just because

Life is too important to be taken seriously.
-Oscar Wilde

And this glorious song made me laugh so hard I cried.
Thank you Weird Al!

My Soul Can Reach

My Soul Can Reach
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
 18" x 36"

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height 

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight 

For the ends of being and ideal grace. 

I love thee to the level of every day's 

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. 

I love thee freely, as men strive for right. 

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. 

I love thee with the passion put to use 

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. 

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose 

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, 

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, 

I shall but love thee better after death. 

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I can best describe *love* as this...

When I am with one of those few people I love I am a peace.  My restlessness ends.  I don't need to check my phone or pine for something else.  I feel complete.  I feel accepted.  Nothing is better than lifting them up those individuals.  Nothing is better than being in their arms.

I've realized that it doesn't matter how many Rembrandts I have,
how many Duesenbergs, 
if I don't have someone to share it with 
then I might as well be back in Liverpool broke.
-Daddy Warbucks

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Divorce

Divorce
Copyright 2009 Addie Hirschten
Pen and Pencil on Paper
9" x 12"

When I created the abstract scribbling above I was in the midst of a breakup.  The swelling form on the left is meant to depict my growing feelings of hope and passion.  The jagged line on the right was "the divide"... you know the part where "shields are up" and there is no meeting in the middle, there is no understanding, where you can't reach the other person no matter how hard you try to explain.  I remember wanting to scream "I want you to be happy too!  I always want what is best for you and this just isn't it.  If it's not working for me it can't possibly be working for you." The sun on the right represents the warmest part of that partner- the part that is him, the part that I love.

I dug up this picture this week because miraculously this partner has expressed that he finally understands all that I felt back then.  Not only understands it but he said, "I know now that you always had my best interests at heart... and I am so glad that you pushed me outside of my comfort zone."

I can't tell you how happy this makes me.  And none of this would have happened if I hadn't decided around that same time to be honest with everyone in my life.  It is as though by wading through all of this mucky yucky truth I have finally gotten to the center of the sun.  And it is a warm and wonderful place of acceptance.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.  This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Suspension

Suspension
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
9" x 12"

It is now life and not art that requires a willing suspension of disbelief.

-Lionel Trilling

Compassion

Compassion
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
16" x 20"

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.

Without them humanity cannot survive.

-Dalai Lama

Friday Feature: Da Vinci

Virgin and Child with Saint Anne by Da Vinci

To be a renaissance man is to be a jack of all trades.  Leonardo da Vinci was a... painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer.  And that is just what we know about.

Fetus by da Vinci

How well can we truly become an expert in any one thing without taking away from other skills?  Do these passions feed off of each other?  Sometimes I feel like I need to focus more.  Tally up those 10,000 hours.  Polish it until it shines. And...

Quality is better than quantity.
-Aesop

Then again da Vinci inspires me... 

his prolific work and her smile. 

Mona Lisa by da Vinci

I love to see you smiling.