WHO ARE YOU?

You are unique, full of mystery and a work of art continually in progress.  You are a story waiting to be told and read with interest by you.  Ever changing with a patchy past, an infinite range of possible futures and only the current moment as fact.  Whatever you choose you know you are missing something essential about who you are.  Like an artist building an image layer on layer.  A little more detail here, blend the colour there, cover up a bit that does not fit until the overall impression is good enough. Good enough.  Yes.  But incomplete, always incomplete.
The challenge is clear.  You are always changing.  What you were yesterday is different today.  What you believe you will be never takes final form.  What you are now in the moment is guided by where your attention rests.  And yet your mind continues to seek a definitive answer to the question.
Sometimes you think you are great.  Sometimes you are like everyone else.  When times are tough then you are just not good enough.
Who you are has all the ingredients of the most interesting novel you will ever read.  A great novel distills the wisdom of the writer and leads the reader in a sensual dance in a timeless land of wonder.  Although much is missing it captures the essential and leaves clues for the enquiring mind to complete its own picture.  The words slide off the page in to hungry eyes impatient for the next hint.  At the end you breathe out and relax in your chair.  In that moment life is perfection.
The novel you are is unique.  You are the writer and the reader.  Everything is the way you say it is and your interpretation is the only truth there is.  Only you can let someone else create it.  Only you can decide to write it for someone else.  But the pressures are great.  So many lives are lived following the rails put in place by parents, partners or teachers.  So many lives are lived to tell a story for someone else to read.  No matter how strong these forces are the pen is always yours to take hold of and write the novel you want to be.
The great writer has a keen eye.  He picks out the essential detail from which the reader constructs her image.  The reader fills in the missing information from his own experience.  The reader and writer conspiring in the joint creation of the reality they experience.  Neither seeing fully the image of the other but both sharing a mood, feeling or an idea as the senses coalesce.  A trail of words across a page can leave you angry, happy or sad.  So easily are you swayed by the skilled musicians who play your mind.
Imagine you as the reader of what you write.  You as the sculptor of your senses creating the landscape of your feelings.  Perhaps someone once told you you could do better, work harder of will fail to fulfil your potential.  Keep writing this and notice the pain it brings and the yearning for rescue.  Perhaps sometimes you are free and write who you are and notice how you soar above the earth in a moment of magic.  The great novel of who you are flows from taking hold of your pen and writing the story you want to read.  Writing the story that excites your soul and transcends existence.
If you love Proust, Tolstoy and Woolf then read them.  If Haydn, Mozart and Chopin move you then listen to them.  The page before you is blank.  If you love your life then pick up your pen and write it now.  Write it and read it to discover and enjoy your story.
That is who you are.

MASTERPIECE

I am on a wonderful journey of discovery under the tuition of an inspirational art teacher ,in Gata de Gorgos (Spain), called Julia.  I grew up believing I could not draw or paint.  Along the way I am sure this view was reinforced by others but most of all by myself.  Julia is taking me step by step along a path that has already shown me I can do far more than I ever thought possible.  I have a drawing I am proud of and am now making progress with an oil painting.  Already I am looking at the world around me in new ways and it has got me reflecting about the process of producing a masterpiece.
A simple but profound instruction from Julia was 'don't draw what you see but draw what is there'.   It didn't mean anything at first.  First I put a grid in place and then drew lines in relation to where they were on a grid of the picture I was working on.  Once the lightly drawn outline was in place I added in the dark areas.  All the time paying no attention to the overall picture but focussing on small areas of detail and reproducing them as best I could.  The fun bit was adding a mid tone all over the picture.  Just rub the pencil over the paper until it is all mid tone.  I could now work on the lighter tones by rubbing out and the mid tones by enhancing.  Gradually a picture began to emerge and as I stood back from the detail and took a look I was astonished at the result.
I am now working on an oil painting and the process is similar.  Outline, lights and darks, blend the boundaries, lights and darks, always focus on the detail I am working on and then stand back and see the effect.  I will not produce a masterpiece but already I am producing something that is pleasing for me.  The pleasure is in the process of painting, seeing the world afresh and achieving a result beyond any expectations I had before meeting Julia.  In my early learnings of the process of painting it makes me think aboutI the patience and commitment to produce a work that moves the soul.
At a dinner party a guest is reputed to have said to Proust of a page in 'In Search of Lost Time' that 'you must have been in heaven the day you wrote that page' to which he replied 'madame that page took over a year to write and included many moments of torture along the way.'  Julia says that in every picture she paints she can always see what more she could do and how she could improve next time.  These are the seeds of a masterpiece as the artist puts something on the canvas, looks at it, works on it, stands back, reworks it, lets the mood emerge, does some more, leaves it for a while, maybe longer, thinks about it, forgets it, comes back to it fast and slow.  Go right in to the detail, work on it and stand back to see the effect.  Emotions reach peaks and troughs and a battle to start again or throw it all away is constantly being fought.  Eventually something emerges that seems to make sense and brings an inner calm and a smile is allowed.  It is satisfying and good enough to say 'it is done.'  Very occasionally in a lifetime there is somewhere something that is produced that is accepted as a masterpiece.  Acceptance comes as it touches many souls and the viewer transcends prior understanding of the way the world is.  It seems to me that as long as there are new eyes looking there will always be a fresh way to see 'what is there.'