Passion

Passionflower, passionfriut, Passionfish. (Everyone should eat at Passionfish before they die. It's a restaurant in Pacific Grove in California)

I've been thinking a lot about passion lately. Its the thing I want to be the defining element in my life. Without it I feel dead. Life means passion, passion means life. When I was thinking about color earlier, I realized that for me color is a way to an expression of passion. Color and painting is this for me in a way that sculpture is not. Sculpure is tactile and sensual, but color is sheer passion. Pure celebration. Using color the way I do when painting connects me to a very specific part of myself. It's a part of me that I sometimes have difficulty connecting with.

Before my amaryllis painting was stolen out of the art building, one of my classmates had asked to buy it. I was going to sell it to him, but it got me thinking. It really didn't feel very good to think about selling my painting. It was like selling a part of myself and it felt so mercenary, and yucky. The thing is, I feel like part of my soul goes into my painting. But to be an artist, unless you want to be the exclusive collector of your own work (which is crazy), you have to be able to sell it. I was talking to my husband about this, and he asked me if it would feel better to sell my paintings for a huge amount of money. (He's all about money :-) I think it would feel better, like that part of me is being validated, and going somewhere it would be valued. Other then selling my silly student work for mass amounts of money though, I think I've got two options: get used to it, or stop putting my soul into my work.

I want to keep the soul.

So I'm sure I'll get over feeling like a dirty mercenary. I feel that without the soul going into it, there's no point. Without the soul, it's just a pretty picture, and there's already too much of that. Then my art teacher today, during our show-and-tell session, said that we have to separate ourselves from our work. Otherwise we're living in our own world. I don't remember the exact context, and I'm not sure exactly how she meant it, but since I've been thinking about it, it got me thinking about it more. So now I'm just confused. (Aren't we all pretty much living in our own worlds anyway?)

Back to passion though; Brandon might take me to Passionfish during spring break! (8 hour drive to get there, that's how good this place is) Monterey's probably beautiful right now, I'd love to see it.