A few years ago I was in NYC at an exhibition of Paul Signac paintings. He was a neo-Impressionist Pointillist inspired by Georges Seurat. Beautiful colors, intense details set down one point of color at a time. I was seated looking at a particularly large work when a passerby remarked that he must have been a really lonely person. At the time I thought “What do you know?” but it stuck with me.
I wonder what he thought of during the hours and hours and hours of painting one point tip of color after another in a scientifically determined arrangement? I mean, this was before iPod, Stereo or even radio. So there is no music in the back ground like I often have. Silence is the rule unless someone comes to visit and talk while he painted. And the scientific laying on of color means that he did not drink or imbibe in anything that would possibly alter his mechanical ability. Perhaps coffee, tea or smoking?
I am reminded of that now as I spend hours and days hovering over projects with the tiniest of paint brushes I can find. Then I get on my bike and ride on long solitary rides, over hill and dale, stretching my muscles and my imagination. Signac was growing up during the advent of the Penny farthing and was painting before common use of the bicycle. I guess that is why I do not find any in his scenes. So, with no bike and no music, the work must have been consuming. I know that when my work is going well, there is nothing getting to me from the outside anyway, no music, no talking, no stupid chatter in my brain trying to distract me. No, when it is going, it is blissful, silent, the voices of angels singing.
But am I lonely?
Certainly I am reclusive often, but that is not the same as lonely.
It is not that I specifically eschew company. I just stumble from studio to food to bike to sleep. Re-arrange and repeat. Aside from family and the tenuous connection that Facebook provides, I am fairly solitary. I have always have been somewhat hermitical this is no shock to my system. I don’t miss company until I do.
New art projects and riding daily leaves little time to socialize it seems. But, I have a riding companion now. My great-nephew Brandon is thirteen months old and loves riding in the bike trailer. He sings louder the faster I go. I am teaching him to say “Faster Aunt Laurentia!” And now I can say that am not alone; ergo, not lonely.
So there, don’t worry about me and my mental stability.
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