Me, Myself and I

Me, Myself and I   watercolor   15 x 12.5

Every now and again it is, I believe, healthy to look inwards.  I believe that, over the years, I have painted about 5 self-portraits.  There is a bit of discomfort inherent in this undertaking, if one is honest.  Sweetness must be discarded, along with the multitude of masks we wear throughout the goings-on of life.  Am I the person I want and yearn to be?  We have the option to continually strive at our own notion of "goodness" and "correctness".  More than once I have heard feedback on my selfies that I didn't do myself justice...what does that mean?  Too many wrinkles?  Skin that is not smooth enough?

I am reminded of the words of Kirk Mangus who often thought about aesthetic judgment.  He said, "Beauty is a figment of the imagination.  It is also completely controlled by prejudices.".  Soetsu Yanagi, a potter and founder of mingei, the Japanese folk craft movement, expressed similar ideas born from the philosophy of Zen writes:

     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.

That is where I dwell...where I choose to dwell.  For me, beauty lies in the process of the work itself, how we choose to spend our hours, our days.