Joe ~ May 9

 

It’s Precious

 

A long time ago I attended grad school at Syracuse University. I had intended to take my art talent and sensibilities into the commercial art world. I was fortunate to take classes with many award winning illustrators and designers who opened up worlds of wonder which I was not anywhere near ready to comprehend. But, I listened and observed to what they had to witness about their work process and the philosophies that drove their creativity and production. I felt pretty defeated at the time. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t never do and would never have the talent to create at that high level of achievement. But, here I am, almost a lifetime hence, remembering and practicing the golden nuggets of info that my memory has managed to recall.  Learning has always been a strange non-linear path for me. It took me years of failure to realize that failure indeed was the best path to learning. As I tackle the painting that is quickly coming due the words of Murray Tinkelman are constantly playing on a loop in my artistic brain. If you have ever seen his work you would see a complex series of pointillistic dots and crosshatches….Million of them. Painstaking?…you might ask. Tedious? Maybe. I asked him about that one time and he simply replied, “Every mark, line and dot is precious…”. I’ve have always seemed to be in a mad dash to get things done in a hurry and in doing so would make mistakes and a good deal of the time compromise my work. I have begun to trust my own sense of time in slowly progressing through the many layers of applied paint that technically if given the proper focus and importance will always turn out to enhance the piece as a whole. The present or the now, is all that I have to really experience and activate this preciousness of the only living moment that we will ever practice. I have delighted in spending time on, what would appear to be a small insignificant element, and being thoroughly happy with how this present moment has contributed so greatly and made this piece larger than the sum of its parts. 

The author and philosopher, Eckhart Tolle, has stated, “Time isn’t precious at all., because it is an illusion… What you perceive as time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is. 

I hope to expand on this mode of thought in all aspects of my life. Murray Tinkelman was there in my life to gift me with the wisdom that has taken me decades to decipher and understand and apply….and that’s really precious.