Imperfect - Illustration Friday August 5/2011

Inspired by the Illustration Friday quote:
"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring". - Marilyn Monroe

I read the quote over and over, an idea tickling the back of my mind like a sneeze that hasn't quite arrived - until today, when it occurred to me that jesters embodied the entire quote.

Often different physically, they dressed to stand out even more; the butt of jokes and the confidants of the powerful; japesters, jokesters, philosophers, mountebanks and scapegoats, they made an art of the ridiculous, found beauty in imperfection and split madness until within they found wisdom. I wonder if Marilyn ever saw herself this way...

Obsession - Illustration Friday July 28/2011

From the Illustration Friday quote:
"Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment." - Claude Monet.

Looking at Monet's paintings side-by-side with countless copies, the originals stand out - the subtleties of colour which swallowed Monet whole, that he revelled in, chased, and tried endlessly to commit to canvas, those subtleties are lost in copies.

Instead of copying his paintings, to lose oneself in observation as he did, let us imitate that. Perhaps not to the point of obsession and torment - but how else to grasp at the joy he found in it?

sending

sent.

"Perennial" - Illustration Friday July 22/2011

Inspired by the Illustration Friday quote:
"A good scientist is a person in whom the childhood quality of perennial curiosity lingers on. Once he gets an answer, he has other questions". - Frederick Seitz

Childhood curiosity leads us with a string of questions into unexplored territory. Finding one answer, the mind is already wondering about the next question. And the next. And the next. Observations shed in the quest for a particular answer surface later for further exploration.

I.F. July 15 "Gesture"

From the Illustration Friday Quote: "Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence" - Henri Matisse

Pondering the word and the quote, I wandered off into thinking about gestures in general, and those with more or less permanent effects.

Gestures on the highway are generally held to have little permanence, though they tend to cheapen the maker and leave an unpleasant taste for those on the receiving end. I wonder if this effect, observed in themselves, led so many cultures to ascribe magical powers to gestures - and to spend energy either in warding against them or learning to use them to advantage?

Here is one person, making a gesture in a very impermanent surface, previous gestures swirling around her, clinging to her every surface, changing her form, her appearance and filtering the world in which she moves.

Threshhold "stay" Illustration Friday July 8/2011

From the Illustration Friday quote: "Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them." - Jim Carrey

Pondering on what the fear described might be based, so many times one turns a corner and finds the unknown too much to face - open doorway, blank page, empty calendar - no matter how vast the blank, all filled one step, one word, one action at a time.

And despite the inference of the above quote, no need to overcome fear to take that first step, accept the opportunities that develop, write that first word - and the next and the next... just do it despite the fear, and then forget all about fear in discovery, growth and all that they bring.

Baking DragonBerry pie