Redtree Times

Island Getaway— Now at the West End Gallery

If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.

—Paul Cezanne

Here’s a post from several years back:

I spend a lot of time alone in the isolation of my studio. Fortunately for me, it is the place in the world where I am most comfortable and feel completely myself.

It is the place where I can feel unrestrained to free the mind and go wherever it takes me. The place where I can shed the uncertainty I find in the outer world and feel free to daydream. The place where I can summon up landscapes that exist only inside myself. A place to study. To listen. To see.

It is my university, my library, my theater, my monastery and my place of refuge.

My haven.

When I am out of the studio, I am all the while trying to get back to it.

When others come into my studio, the dynamic of that place changes and I feel myself suddenly self-conscious and a bit uncomfortable, like I am standing in someone else’s home.

The visitors’ eyes become my eyes and I notice things I never see on a day-to-day basis. The cat hair on the floor that needs to be swept up. The paint splatters on the wall or a fingerprint in paint on the wall switchplate. The windows that need cleaning. The piles of papers that I have been meaning to go through for too many months. The paintbrushes soaking in murky water scattered throughout the place or the start of a not-too-good painting that will most likely never see the outer world.

In that moment, my perfect castle of isolation becomes a hovel of uncertainty.

But the castle remarkably reappears once I am alone again. The uncertainty recedes and I begin to feel myself once more.

My isolation is my default state of being.

I understand exactly what Cezanne is saying at the top. I have been more comfortable alone than in the company of others since I was a child. I don’t know if that is a strength or just a neurotic peccadillo. But I know that if I ever find uncertainty in my isolation, I will have lost my footing in this world.

But thankfully, that hasn’t happened yet…

The post above is from several years ago. I noticed this morning that it had received quite a few views here in the past days so I thought I would read it again for myself. Sometimes I go back to read something that has slipped from memory and it seems new to me. I recognized this one, most likely since it ran again here three years back. Plus, it was centered around a theme of isolation as a desired state of being, something I have wrote about a number of times before.

I’ve been experiencing periods of uncertainty in recent times so it seemed pertinent to me. In these down times, the inviting warmth and light I normally find in the isolation of my studio departs. The space feels as though it has been replaced by a cool and empty darkness as I struggle to find that creative spark that will once again provide the missing warmth and light.

As I have noted many times before, I know this feeling well. I have gone through it too many times before. Having done so, I know that it is a temporary thing so long as I persevere and keep lighting matches against the darkness.

Inevitably, one of those matches will eventually turns to a roaring flame and my splendid isolation will once again be as I desire it– invitingly warm and filled with light.

That is my certainty.

Speaking of Splendid Isolation, here is a favorite Warren Zevon song with that title which has been played here before. He mentions Georgia O’Keeffe who knew a bit about isolation.

Now, get out of here, you’re blocking my light…