'Give what you have to give irrespective of whether it is valued or appreciated. If you give but only in the hope of recognition or reward, then you are like a small child clamouring for its mother’s attention. There is no dignity in that, and it is not a good way to live.'
I stand by that, but I do not always live by it.
Recently, I have been working on a painting of a sea turtle. I have been working from photos, which is not my usual practice, and not in keeping with my personal manifesto, at least as far as landscape work is concerned. However, it is very hot in Athens, and this permits me to work in my air-conditioned studio, rather than the broiling outdoors. Also, it is a preparatory image from which I intend to create a mosaic. It is an intermediary step, rather than the finished article. That appeases my conscience.
I have been motivated to finish it partly because I thought it would give me a good reason to get back in touch with a girl I met earlier in the summer, and whose memory annoyingly refuses to fade. We have been communicating intermittently, but it is good to make contact with something to offer or share, like a recommendation or the image of a recent painting. In my mind, I had styled her as my muse, so as to avoid the uncomfortable fact that I was falling foul of my own principles about giving without hope of reward.
I sent her this image:
However, my muse did not reply, and I was disappointed. This forced me to recognise that she was not just my muse, that I wanted - want - something from her. And in fact, it is worse than that. I remembered that my mother always encouraged my creative efforts when I was a child, even to the extent of hanging all my infantile scribbles on her bedroom wall. In my mind, creativity is very closely bound up with the admiration of the women in my life. Really, Watashi-wa is the small child clamouring for his mother's attention!
I fear this goes very deep, and will be hard to unpick.
Father Kragiopoulos has a suggestion:
'Give your talent to Christ to get it back a hundred times more. Give it to Christ and it will still be yours. Only, you won't have misspent or lost it by tending to it as if it were your greatest asset. Give it to Christ to release you of it.'
The Boss of Bosses and Muse of Muses?
watashi-wa in the snow 