New Hat Old Mirror Same Old Self

New Hat Old Mirror Same Old Self   charcoal and watercolor on paper   13.5 x 10

Standing at the easel in the new year is so very daunting!  The longer one has "holidayed", the more difficult.  Taking a self-assessment is, I think, a good thing...it provides a re-ordering and a re-prioritizing.  Other artists have told me repeatedly that my self-portraits don't do me any favors.  Beauty is not my aim...I have always known that.  I would rather the beauty come from the stroke-making, the artistic rendering and the overall concept. 

My son and daughter-in-law visited the Kirk Mangus exhibit at the Cleveland MOCA while in the area over Christmas and brought home a brochure.  Mangus' work was completely free and original and seemed to lack our prejudicial notion of harmony and beauty.  He said, "Beauty is a figment of the imagination.  It is also completely controlled by prejudices". 

From the brochure and the artist Soetsu Yanagi:

A true artist is not one who chooses beauty in order to eliminate ugliness, he is not one who dwells in a world that distinguishes between the beautiful and the ugly, but rather he is one who has entered the realm where strife between the two cannot exist.

This work was done from life in my studio while looking into an antique mirror with many imperfections.

Amen.