Watercolour class

How does an artist, or say a philoso­pher, apply for a job? What would be his-her resume? “You see, sir, I have a vision, and by reflect­ing on sev­eral metaphors I’ve acquired through my youth and study, and apply­ing all that through a mixed media of expe­ri­ence and colours, I’ve made this spe­cial piece.” It won’t work, of course, because art and the essen­tial feel­ing behind it is impos­si­ble to quan­tify, and that by def­i­n­i­tion defy the defin­able pur­pose of this soci­ety which mea­sures every­thing using rulers of econ­omy, reli­gion and morality.

So how should I sum­mon myself before you in this hum­ble col­umn, my dear friend? How should I quan­tify myself? Per­haps it’s best if I tell a story that points to my intention.

I was prac­tis­ing water­colour paint­ing in a class with lots of young stu­dents around. The motif was a quite inter­est­ing twiggy vine tree and its dif­fer­ent intri­cate tex­tures and colours – a per­fect Mediterranean-flavoured image to exer­cise flow of colour and develop our brush skills. A teacher was super­vis­ing and help­ing those in need.

A lit­tle fel­low came to him and com­plained about the tools he used – “Mis­ter teacher, my brush is com­pletely bro­ken. It doesn’t want to paint nicely. This here is all wrong.” His brush was fine, of course, but my teacher took young fellow’s water­colour sheet, dipped his fin­ger into the jar of water and fixed the prob­lem with a slow twist of a thumb in a wet paint.

“This is the best brush you can get”, teacher answered and smiled to us. I’ve embraced and engraved that pre­scient advice deep in my heart. What’s the bet­ter way to explain nat­ural expres­sion of devo­tion anyway?

– Zvon­imir

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 21:08 and is filed under Cursum perficio and tagged with art, natural devotion, raganuga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.