Wisdom and Madness

Scripture and the Creative Life

I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Ecclesiastes 1:16-18

Yesterday was Yom Kippur. I spent the day reading Ecclesiastes and part of Isaiah, and it was more scripture than I’d read in months. Perhaps a whole year. I’ve been so lazy about reading the Bible for a long time, to be completely honest. There’s a long and convoluted history of reasons for this, but they’re more excuses when I really start picking them all apart. It wasn’t because I intentionally turned away from God. It was because I have always thought I would be worthless if I wasn’t something more in this world. Which is why I took up a more serious pursuit of art.

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Oiling The Hinges

Oils, Painting and Process

My art-making muscles are so rusty! I’ve been focusing more on writing, veggie gardening, and fixing up the house during the lockdown, but I broke out these Chroma Archival oils again yesterday for the first time in months, and decided to try painting a J.C. Leyendecker. I considered doing a master study of one of his works, but because they’re simply too beautiful and I still have no idea what I’m doing with this new medium, I chose to copy a photo of the artist himself instead.

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Hindsight is 2020

Just Blogging

I should have started this blog a long time ago.

I mean, I did. Multiple times. I’ve set up maybe six or seven blog sites over the years, fiddling around amateurishly with layouts and HTML and CSS, but I don’t think they ever progressed further than one or two posts each time. I just didn’t know what to say, or if it was even important enough for saying. A turning point came when I joined Instagram in 2015, and met a ton of lovely friends on there. What started as simply a fun place to share art and meet other artists, eventually became that blog-like outlet that I had been craving, especially after the Stories feature was added. For those who don’t know, Stories are a Snapchat clone. And let me tell you, they are like crack. Heck, all of Instagram, and pretty much the entirety of social media is too. Except it’s all legal, and ‘free’, and all your friends are doing it alongside you. And I think in some way, large or small, individually or as a society, it messes all of us up. But that’s for another post.

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