Immersion
All summer it’s been words, words, words for me. And on top of words: ideas, thoughts, problems to solve with my cognitive brain. I love words and ideas and cognitive problems—they are a good part of my life, my passion—but after too long with my head stuffed into them, with them swimming all around me all the time
I start to forget. I lose sight of my aesthetic self, the rest of my senses. Like how much I love texture and color. Light and sound. Lines, shapes, figures, layers. Movements.
Right before I left for vacation here on the West Coast, I had this evening that helped me start to remember. After a long day of working on an academic article I just sat in a hot bath flipping through a Restoration Hardware and an Arhaus furniture catalogue—no big deal. But as I was falling asleep afterward, all these beautiful colors were shifting around in my consciousness, and relief began to saturate my brain as it settled and deepened into each sensual combination. Just aesthetics, no words; quite a little bliss.
Now I’m in Bend, Oregon with my folks, two days into an intensive art workshop with this painter named Robert Burridge. Talk about bliss. Not only is this a drop-dead gorgeous town—river meandering through it, green everywhere, Mount Hood in the background—but my right brain has been given free rein while my left brain gets to curl into a dark corner for awhile, a bear hibernating. Oh, the relief. Burridge is into breaking all the rules, and he loves bright colors, and contrast, and feeling. We get to go nuts. And it’s not necessarily easy—we’re painting for about 7 hours a day—but it feels so, so good.
And in this weirdly happy way I’m getting obsessive. Like yesterday, when I ran to Albertsons for a 64-pack of Crayons, sketchbook, and orange bell pepper, red apple, yellow pear, and red pear–for still life studies. Yes. Happy indeed.
I’ll leave it there for now. Already, too many words.
