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Date Posted: 21:52:50 05/21/08 Wed
Author: SS
Subject: **************TUESDAYJOURNAL#3*************

Noah Eaton
May 19, 2008
Writing 420

Apparitions Gauzed With Watercolor


“I think art is good at looking back and looking forward. I don't think art is good at looking head-on. At the end of the day, people are more important than paintings.”
Damien Hirst

This is what echoed to me through reading Honor Moore’s heartwrenchingly breathtaking essay “My Grandmother Who Painted”, as there are often so many stories we hear about wunderkinds and brilliant minds who nonetheless appear self-possessive and aloof to much the rest of the world, and tragically fall into spirals of schizophrenia and disintegration as they try to come to terms with life beyond the colors and shapes they themselves seem to see for, as Van Gogh said: “It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.”
And that’s what can make the life of an artist feel apparitional ever too often; because when many of us paint, or write, or sing, we do so because we feel most alive when we do so, and while any work of art may often be laminating there before your very eyes, many just never stand close enough to it and see that, as James Rosenquist had said from studying Art Theory back in high school, any painting or work of art is just a big feeling around you, and many of us only come off as short-sighted or far-sighted.
That’s what made me cry reading this, as I hear stories all the time about autistic children possessing incredible reserves of talent in the arts, but also are frequently battling with doubts and insecurities, often brooding into bouts of depression. Being diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome myself, I have been particularly moved by the work of British artist Gilles Tréhin, who only he can see Urville, a city with a population of 11,820,257 that is situated off the coast of Côte d'Azur between Cannes and St Tropez, and has written an entire book on it. He got the idea as a child when he created an airport out of Lego blocks and, realizing he had a grand vision for annexing from the airport but lacking Legos to accomplish, turned to pencil drawing to sketch out his grand vision and, by the age of five, was already proficient at pencil drawings, drawing buildings re-created from his own memory.
Tréhin, too, had to deal with much “madness” in his life as well. He was echolalia, terrified by the mere pop of a balloon or the ignition of a firecracker and, due to feeling socially excluded, often would be found banging his head against a windowpane and had to be hospitalized once from part of his skull being fractured from that. Fortunately, he had protective parents who liked knowing people with different minds, so helped him to embrace his talents and even research autism regularly (his father Paul is now head of Autism Europe).
This is what makes Honor’s question to her grandmother Margarett so emotionally poignant to me: “Was it craziness or just something in you that needed to be understood and wasn’t?” (55). Especially if it were going from being the featured exhibitionist at Kraushaar Galleries to wanting to dive into a bay with no water not long after. And that leaves me feeling as though any of us are just as capable of winding up bedridden under daffodil-colored satin blankets inundated with scrapbooks filled with photos of these apparitions we are, staring right back at us………only with cheeks far less thick than they are now and being dressed like a Spanish infanta.
And yet, any of us are also just as capable of being examples to one another; showing one another the language of truest nature that resonates within our skinny, still like lake eyes, regardless if you’re a painter, or a horticulturalist, or a train conductor. Indeed I have regrets that I probably have never understood my grandmother as much as I wish I should, but I’ve always admired her and want her to show me exactly why it is that wisteria trees weep an elegant lavender, why the copper beeches glisten when the embers of dusk speckle them, as she herself loves to garden frequently………….and I certainly hope that opportunity doesn’t come three months before her passing.
People are indeed more important than paintings. They’re the personified language of nature and, whether it’s Urville they see, or colors that are seemingly almost hot to the touch, they know language isn’t meant to travel merely forward. It travels backwards as well, and when we finally accept that we begin to find pieces of all that we are filling the air like jewels, beading those still lake eyes like tourmaline gemstones on a tiara………….and that is when we feel most alive not merely as artists, but as people, knowing we were never really crazy, just misunderstood, and now that we have been understood more, we are truly listening! :)

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