The Great Wave

Slightly unrewarding day today for no apparent reason other than my own antsiness - dying to get on with things in the great scheme and finding the timescale frustrating. So many little opportunities keep presenting themselves and it takes time for offers to come to fruition. I know I should just be enjoying the moment but sometimes this wisdom can be hard to appreciate. I can be a bit of an 'I want it all and I want it now' character when I don't check the tendency purposefully. Take time to smell the flowers girl..
Poppies out in the herb bed which are wonderfully fragile and transluscent; that particular shade of pinky purple really is beautiful; and by this evening they were gone, blown to the four winds leaving only their little shakers behind. These I shall treasure and increase my display next season by scattering all over the front bed with the Scabious; that'll be a fab colour combo. And so to my lunchtime rumination with a colleague today, which turned to flowers as well; he was wondering out loud whether there is a purpose in attempting to replicate nature in art, for example in a flower study. It's a tricky one for me; where would we be without Vincent's sunflowers, Georgia O'Keefe, Monet's waterlillies, Cezanne.. maybe the problem lies in the suppostion that the flower is an easy or suitable subject for painters of all abilities? There are a thousand books and now DVDs on flower painting but it is probably one of the hardest things to master. A good painter in my opinion puts much of themself in the work and to put ones feelings for flowers into a picture is a very hard thing, let alone trying to capture their vulnerability, radiance and transcience. A pretty tall order for paint on paper or canvas.
I feel a can of worms opening; the questions of art and nature have long caused me to ponder and I don't feel a conclusion is possible. While I have the highest regard for the craft needed to render a scene or bouquet 'as if it were real' I have no real interest in the resulting image, and I find it positively restrictive to be a slave to reality as viewed directly. I have too much respect for 'nature' (how I wish there was a better word for it but I don't know it) to imagine that I could try and reproduce it in two dimensions. I love to steal its colours and patterns but to try to draw its face accurately seems like sacriledge, or arrogance. Plenty more thinking to be done on this subject methinks, it is not one to get too bogged down with.
Happy birthday to the Dalai Lama, with apologies for being a day late! I had the immense and unforgettable priviledge to see him a few years ago in wonderful circumstances. Driving through town over the Mound my car was flagged to a halt at the head of a queue of vehicles by traffic police; it soon became apparent that we were waiting for a car to exit the castle, which it soon did, among an accompanying security surround. My car being at the front, I could peer into the black limo to try and discern the passenger; thus peering my face must have been a picture as I recognised the bespectacled face of one of my heroes peering back at me; then he gave a little wave, a smile and was gone. It moves me still to think of that tiny moment in time, such a special one for me.