365 days of aRt. DAY ONE HUNDRED & THIRTY-ONE.

sometimes
the sadness comes
in waves
sometimes
it's high tide
all damn day
(canvas text)

Blog about the piece:
While painting this canvas I was reminded of a book that I carried around for the majority of my adolescence, Mitch Album's TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE. One of my favorite lessons from this book was that of emotion. Morrie cries freely and often, and continually encourages Mitch to do so; he says, that 'if you hold back on the emotions -- if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them -- you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid'. Morrie has Lou Gehrig's disease, a debilitating, incurable disease which ravages his body, but, cruelly, leaves him intellectually lucid. And instead of feeling pity for himself all of the time, or living his life in denial all of the time, Morrie chooses to feel the sadness once a day, every morning. He mourns for his body and the control that he lost. He grieves and cries if he needs to. And then, he moves on with his day and allows himself to feel joy and happiness in the little time he has left. The greatest lesson of all was the connection of emotion and life -- that is, you cannot fully live until you allow yourself to feel the full capacity of your emotions.