I don't know about you, but there is something incredibly inspiring about walking into a studio and seeing paint lining shelves. Paint on floors and walls, splatters here and there. Lingering memories of works completed, and long gone...
And then, the scent.
Oil paints, thinners, sealers...
The scent of creativity.
Have you ever watched a film or read a book about artists or writers, or photographers (and more), and been left feeling weak in the knees?
Feeling a sense of understanding and knowing, tucked into little nooks and crannies in your own being?
I feel like that when I watch the film about Seraphine De Senlis, have you seen it?
I watch it from time to time (it came out in 2008, I think?), and smile and cry and then, feel the need to grind little bits of homemade paints up, and jump into my art passions amongst candles late at night. (you can Netflix the film)
Movie trailer below...
It reminds of things such as...
The passion to create, for creating's sake, and for nothing more.
Creating because it calls you, whispers to you, beckons you.
But mostly, because it is a part of your existence on many levels.
I felt like I was seeing just that, several years ago, when I discovered a film about Henry Darger.
I almost went crazy watching the film, In the Realms of the Unreal.
You may have seen it?
I loved seeing all his little pieces of chalk and crayon and broken bits of color.
Not to mention tales and drawings to fill 30 lifetimes.
(photo above and more, here)
But most of all, his passion for creating.
Creating for sanity.
Or, insanity.
Because really, what is sanity?
One wonders these things, you know.
But mostly...
Creating because your brain is bubbling over.
Because, it's how you catch and collect the overflow.
I remember doing this growing up - I called it, painting my emotions.
It was the only way for me not to drown in my young over-active brain of feelings and thoughts, and more feelings.
I don't know about you, but tales about creatives and their lives just draw me in, mesmerized.
From Camille Claudel to Virginia Woolf, to Any Warhol, Alfred Stieglitz and countless others.
Their stories, their tales, they tug at me.
Do you have a favorite story of a creative person?
A movie or book you love, that takes you places deep in yourself?
Sylivia Plath? Vermeer? Keith Haring, Basquiat, Bosch, Frida, Alice Neel, Andrew Wyeth?
Such vastly different tales of lives and art, but all come back to creating as the key, don't they?
I loved watching The Girl with a Pearl Earring, just for the paint making scenes.
I am testing different paint making techniques with garden findings, we'll see how that goes.
I long to be at Rembrandt House, watching their historical methods for making oil paints....
(Image above and more, here)
Ah well, seems I have successfully distracted myself from the gobs of things I need to get done today.
What's new?
Don't be surprised if you find me raiding the local chicken coop because I feel the "need" to make egg tempera paints, and as you know, I will need fresh eggs and yolks for this........
(Andrew Wyeth's studio above, and more photos, here)
I suppose I should get back to work myself :)
Yummm.
What are you up to on this fine day?
Love, V
ps: I just saw the Woodmans (not for kids) - so intense...
pss: If you love dark rooms, here is a film about Paul Strand that will make you want to get in there right away. I used to spend endless hours in darkrooms... I miss it terribly. Secrets revealed on paper in the dark... So mysteriously wonderful!
