A Pause For Beauty:
An artist’s journal.
Below, the Art Journal posts for the month of June, 2023.
May posts can be found here.
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. - Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet All of Picasso’s great paintings came after he gave up on drawing well or painting realistically, and instead focused on his dream world and the emotions that came bubbling up. He offered us a portal into symbols of mysterious aspects of life. What Picasso had in abundant quantity, and what most of us lack, is a deep abiding belief that he had something to say that was important. We all have light and dark inside us; Picasso believed that even the darkest nooks and crannies of his inner world were beautiful, were worth exploring, had something important to reveal about the nature of existence. Picasso’s paintings are great, in part, because he loved himself, he didn’t give up on himself. He was in love with his vision. He did 50,000 paintings in his life, I think. Not all great of course. But his greatest paintings changed art. Our role as artists is communicate from our depths about where the juice hangs out. Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here. Visit here for May Pause For Beauty posts.
“Follow your bliss,” the phrase coined by Joseph Campbell, has come in for a certain amount of derision of late. Similarly, Marsha Sinetar’s “Do what you love, and the money will follow,” has been criticized as overly simplistic and optimistic. It probably is, but it isn’t without value.
"The point of relationship is the added power that life gets in working with it as a channel. If two people are strong together, then life has a more powerful channel than it has with two single people. Life doesn’t care about your relationship. It is looking for channels for its power so it can function maximally."
- Everyday Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck
In this context, consider the word “relationship” in terms of relationship with work, with business partners, with friends, with romantic partners. Go where one plus one equals three. You, me, we are bundles of energy. . . go where your energy is enhanced by adding to the lives of others, where one plus one equals three. Or more.
Those excerpts are taken from a long exploration of the subject of following your bliss.
Read the rest of this Pause For Beauty here. Visit here for May Pause For Beauty posts. 
A balanced life is based on its own rhythm. If you don’t set your own rhythm, and have the discipline to follow it, your life will move at the speed of the culture around us, which moves too fast. The space we make for quiet time affects our thought patterns and, in turn, the quality of our lives. It is important to bring thought to this most crucial area of our lives. Journaling Questions: - To what extent is the rhythm of your life a result of careful thought? Or is it one imposed by the flow around you? - Does the rhythm of your life grow out of a still point, a place of quiet reflection? And Vincent Van Gogh on the universal rhythm, Thoreau on the relationship between rhythm and wisdom, Thomas Merton on rhythm and happiness, Virginia Wolfe on rhythm and writing, PG Downs on the rhythm of wilderness and Tom Wisner on writing, singing and living the fundamental rhythms of the Chesapeake River. . . .
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I had a friend, Herb Pohl, incredible long-distance wilderness paddler who did most of his long Labrador wilderness trips solo. He used to say to me, “A long life is vastly overrated.” A quality life, a good life, is underrated perhaps because it has a price. It takes thought, effort. It’s not just go with the flow. It is dig down deep. Treat your life with the respect that a precious gift deserves. The price you pay for a quality life, quality friendships, quality work is worth it. . . .
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“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” - Jimi Hendrix Three practices are particularly important in living a quality life on your own terms: An openness to messages that bubble up from deeper levels of consciousness. An openness to messages that descend from whatever Greater Powers may exist out there in the universe. Act on the messages you receive. Work. Have self-discipline. Don’t procrastinate. Start now. I’ve been reading Rick Rubin’s new book The Creative Act, and watching interviews of him about creativity. I’m hesitant to suggest any interview in particular because even the least informative include flashes of brilliant insight, but perhaps one that is particularly worthwhile is by Malcom Gladwell on Broken Record. . . .
Visit here to read the rest of this Pause For Beauty. Visit here for May Pause For Beauty posts.