“The White Flower” by Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe said, “The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one’s life.”
She was mentioning how painting was the thing, the reason, the focal point of her existence, such that all the other things that she did in order to keep life going (paying bills, caring for her children, cooking meals, etc.) boiled down to being for her painting.
I think for me, I’d like to say that all the things I do in my life boil down to the One Thing being God, but to be completely honest, it’s probably not. I’m fairly scattered in that I don’t have a focal point of my thinking. I do a lot of things, and they seem disparate in terms of goals. I have a several “main” goals, I suppose, but they aren’t particularly related.
I was watching my son draw on a Magnadoodle the other day, and I was envious of how he just scribbled around and drew whatever he wanted without worrying about how it looked. Then I realized that I do the same thing when I’m playing with the Magnadoodle. Something about the fact that it can never be shared or framed or widely admired lends a freedom to the act of drawing… The resulting picture is necessarily temporary. Even something as simple as using my sketchbook takes away that freedom because it is more permanent.
