Shine– At Principle Gallery
Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it.
Whoever has polished it more sees more — more unseen forms become manifest to him.
–Rumi, 13th Century Persian Poet/Mystic
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job.
–Jean Cocteau, A Call to Order (1926)
Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form.
–Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1595)
The ability to talk well is to a man what cutting and polishing are to the rough diamond. The grinding does not add anything to the diamond. It merely reveals its wealth.
-Orison Swett Marden, Selling Things (1916)
I wrote the other day about how I classify what I do. My work doesn’t necessarily fit in any particular pigeonhole of style or tradition. I do call myself an artist or a painter though it took a long time before I felt I had deserved the artist label. I think that’s something that has to be earned over time.
But yesterday while working on a new painting I realized that, more than anything, I am a polisher. The new piece started out well. The compositional underpainting fell into place, feeling balanced and rhythmic. Just what I wanted. But as the process wore on the painting the colors suddenly became flat and dull. its rhythm seems to evaporate and any zip or spark it had held was nowhere to be seen. It had lost all momentum.
I hated the damn thing.
I wanted to just set it aside or paint over it. Or jump up and down on it.
But I didn’t do any of those things. For one thing, I am racing against the clock right now and didn’t want to waste the days of work already invested. But more importantly, I have been at this point with many paintings countless times before. Despite the discouragement I felt and the utter disdain I held for that painting I knew there was still a wealth of beauty to be uncovered.
It was just a matter of persisting with my grinding and polishing. Which is exactly what I did. The transformation was amazing. There is always a tipping point where this change takes place and within an hour the painting went from a dull old gray rock to shining new gem.
It struck me that this might be my talent. I was like the person who picks up a rock from their driveway and knows that with some grinding and polishing, it will shine. It will reveal all the beauty it possesses.
And everything has some form of beauty that becomes apparent with some grinding and polishing.
The trick comes in knowing when to stop polishing. Too much and you take away the rawness and organic quality that is at the heart of all things. You can make a gem feel like a plastic replica with too much polish.
I have several quotes at the top about the effects of polishing from across the centuries. My favorite might be the last from one of the first self-help writers from the turn of the 20th century, Orison Swett Marden.
At the point I had reached with that painting yesterday, like a rough diamond, everything it would become was already there. It just took a little grinding and polishing to make it shine.
The painting at the top is not the painting of which I wrote. This painting is titled Shine and is a 9″ by 12″ canvas included in my current exhibit at the Principle Gallery, Continuum: The Red Tree at 25.
Redtree Times 