Showing posts with label Carlos Santana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carlos Santana. Show all posts

Sunday, June 23, 2013

sense of self

Gathering a Sense of Self, 22 x 22, acrylic

"Every autobiography is concerned with two characters,
a Don Quixote, the Ego, 
and a Sancho Panza, the Self."

W.H. Auden, Selected Essays


I can feel it happening. With each year, I feel the disparate parts of my life pulling together in a weird synthesis. My interests and areas of serious study form partnerships in my mind and come out in unexpected ways. Music (of course), Literature, Psychology, Seminary, and Art swirl together and make a new kind of sense. Sometimes, jibberish. Sometimes a beautiful language with familiar rhythms. 

While my physical eyes seem to weaken with age, I have increasing clarity about myself. Not just the seemly parts, the admirable qualities, but also the darker side, those shadow elements. I can not ignore them because they are sharply focused and obvious. Both seemly and unseemly, fitted together without apology.

It is a gathering of my sense of myself.

"With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone." Oscar Wilde

I am on the wisdom track.


Santana "She's Not There."




Thursday, March 28, 2013

monsters under my bed

22 x 30, Sumi and charcoal on BFK
The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.   
Francis Bacon (1909 -- 1992)




Thursday, October 13, 2011

guitar guy

Guitar Guy, 17 x 14, watercolor and ink on paper
I used to play keys in a band. Sometimes I shared the lead with the guitar man. Eight bars to him. Eight bars to me. Eight bars back to him, more if he was really into the groove and it was right. I knew. He knew.

Speaking of guitar, one of my all time favorite guitar men, Carlos Santana. You're never wrong when you pick him as your favorite guy.