The Saturday Morning Post - The Arts

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opened The Reach, a new art space, rehearsal space, creative space, just before the Pandemic closed everything.  The Center cancelled their 2020 season in March of 2020, the 2021 season has tentatively started mid year. We have tickets starting in the fall.  They recently announced that they will require proof of vaccination for entry. Good move.  

Art and expression help us to understand the world, and more importantly ourselves.  There is an artist in each of us, even those of us who can't draw a circle, let alone a mountain or a face.  

My brain has difficulty processing some visual spatial data, I never learned to read music, yet there is music in my brain. (I have talked with musicians, who have told me that I never found the right music teacher, someone who could help me understand musical notation, or who would teach music without scores.) 

I paint, I enjoy it, I find it relaxing.  For me is about color, and light, not about representation.  I encourage everyone to paint, don't worry if no one can figure out what you painting,  do it for the process of creating. Very little of my painting even tries to be representational, but all of it makes me feel good for having put paint to canvas.  

Photography is a major artistic outlet for me. I do it because I enjoy it.  From past experience, I know I need to be careful to not slip into doing it to please others, or to try to achieve perfection.  

Writing.  One of the reasons I write this blog, is to force myself to write. To write creatively, to write more clearly, to learn the craft of putting ideas into print that others can understand.  My writing is much more representational than my painting, maybe more than my photography.  I challenge myself to get fully formed ideas, that others can read back and understand what I was thinking, what I was feeling, what I was experiencing.  My writing needs a lot of work, but it is getting better.  I have heard a 10,000 hour rule, that if you want to master a skill, it takes at least 5 years of full time work, 10,000 hour of practice.  My art, my painting, my photography, and my writing, all will improve with practice, practice, practice (how do you get to Carnegie hall.)   

So what are we up to this week?  I am taking the week off from work.  I need to use up some vacation hours before the end of the month, or write them off.  We have an excursion planned to New York city, unless travel becomes too scary.  I will take lots of photos, maybe paint or see things that will inspire me, and I will write.  Oh, and I get another year older.