PAINTING ::: Inner Struggles of Self

INNER STRUGGLES OF SELF
Original 16x20" Acrylic on Stretched Canvas

by Martha A. Wade
Founder, Custom Canvas Art Gallery

ARTIST DESCRIPTION OF PAINTING:
I painted INNER STRUGGLES OF SELF during my first Art History class at the University of Michigan in 1998. Throughout the course, we discussed the significance of race in art and media. The discussions often made me think about my own background, and how my mixed-race background shapes my artwork. I didn't want to be categorized as "black art" or "main stream art" or feel limited to paint certain kinds of people. I always enjoyed living the best of both worlds, between the black and white family and friends. I don't want to choose to be one or the other, black or white.

I went home that afternoon and began painting feverishly, and didn't stop until I had created this painting. At the time, I didn't know what to call it or how to explain it. I suppose years of reflection have given me the knowledge to see myself more clearly through my work.

This painting is a representation of those inner struggles that occur within me when I think about being black or white. I painted the person in the middle in Grey, to symbolize the combination of both, and the colorful forces in the world and within us that try and influence our minds. From the people who tell me I am not black enough, or want to feel my hair, to those who come up to me speaking Spanish because they assume I am too - I accept them all.

I no longer get offended at the questions about my color and race - I use it as an opportunity to educate and remind them that I am a person first. I believe people are many things, and above all we are all ARTISTS who merely needs to be encouraged to come out and CREATE!

Read what My Daily Art Blog said about the artist, Martha Wade and her painting.

ART QUOTES ::: Man and Woman

"Being a woman is a terribly difficult task since it consists principally in dealing with men."
- Joseph Conrad














In a response to our post on Facebook with this quote, one friend said:
"Funny how us men feel exactly the same about women." ~ Lance Garnett ~

Touche.

INSPIRATION ::: Art is Life

"If you practice an art, be proud of it and make it proud of you. It may break your heart, but it will fill your heart before it breaks it. It will make you a person in your own right."
- Maxwell Anderson

"Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it."
- Danny Kaye

"In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it."
- Ernst Fischer

"I'm painting an idea not an ideal. Basically I'm trying to paint a structured painting full of controlled, and therefore potent, emotion."
-Eckhart Tolle

"There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it."
- Bono

"Oh great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives."
- Bob Marley

"Every good painter paints what he is."
- Jackson Pollock

Art is life ...
and life is beautiful ...
are you living your best life?

Beautiful Links
- Working on Goals
- Things to be happy about
- Quote of the day, be happy

"One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself." ~ Leonardo da Vinci

Jack Kerouac + The Beat Generation

THE BEAT GENERATION is a group of American writers and artists who came to prominence in the 1950s. They wrote about cultural phenomena, and inspired a label of beatniks. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the crew represent elements of "Beat" culture in their rejection of mainstream American values, experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality, and an interest in Eastern spirituality.

During the spring of 1951 Kerouac completed, in a three-week burst of writing, a typescript entitled variously “Beat Generation” and “On the Road. These were different names for "a scroll of paper three inches thick made up of one single-spaced, unbroken 120 feet long paragraph” as a friend recalls.

Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" is one of the most controversial American novels of the 20th century. Reading the iconic book, I fell inside his travel journal and was exhilarated. It is the winding phrases and fast paced talking that keep readers interesting in the road trip. I followed Kerouac, Corso, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, di Prima and Burroughs the whole way.



"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes Awww!”
~ Jack Kerouac ~

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angel headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz."
~ Allen Ginsberg ~

These are two of my favorite quotes from these talented Beat writers. I learned a great deal about the Beat Generation while producing an original video for a Spring 2008 Columbia College Chicago exhibition "... and the beats go on". The exhibition turned one campus gallery into a real Beat Cafe complete with books, pillows, ipods, video, live music, and poetry.



You can view the video piece "The Beats" and more from my YouTube: Aesthetic Circle channel.

“And everything is going to the beat. It's the beat generation, it BE-AT, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart, it's being beat and down in the world and like old time lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat.”
~ Jack Kerouac ~

WANT MORE BEAT GENERATION?
Visit The Beat Museum online
Read Beat Poetry
Get the History
Beat Generation Videos on YouTube

Art + Poetry ::: VILLANI & OVERSTREET

(The Eternal Muse, by Paul Louis Villani)


(Music Happens, by Paul Louis Villani)

"I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality."
~ H.A. Overstreet ~



SPECIAL THANKS to contributing writer, Jackie Trudel-Lane from Virginia Beach, for providing the photos and corresponding quote. Jackie has a great eye for finding interesting images that evoke our emotions, and inspire CREATIVITY!

Quoted Aristotle

Favorite Aristotle Quotes
- Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
- Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.
- Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.
- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

About the Philosopher Aristotle
Aristotle was born in 384 BC at Stagirus, a Greek colony and seaport on the coast of Thrace. His father Nichomachus was court physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia. From this legacy began Aristotle's long association with the Macedonian Court, which considerably influenced his life.

Aristotle was the most notable product of the educational program devised by Plato, and he spent twenty years of his life studying at the Academy. He studied an amazing range of subjects, from logic, philosophy, and ethics to physics, biology, psychology, politics, and rhetoric. The initial book in Aristotle's collected logical works is The Categories, an analysis of the state and quality of his favorite topics.

Lessons Learned
In 2002, I studied Art Admin for one semester at the Art Institute of Chicago, we read Plato and Aristotle. At the time, I found it difficult to understand some of the teachings and observations. Today, I feel better suited to read works from Aristotle, and to actually grasp his point of view. I chose the quotes above because they speak to me in some way; like the last quote about an educated mind. In the past, I used to run off at the mouth and react when someone disagreed with me. Now more educated, older, and with kids of my own, I am able to be more accepting and patient of other people's opinions. I guess sometimes getting older IS better, especially when it comes with gaining knowledge about life.

Get more Aristotle quotes

Quoted Madame Curie

"Life is not easy for any of us, but what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained." --Madame Marie Curie

Marie Skłodowska Curie (Nov 7, 1867 – Jul 4, 1934) was a physicist and chemist of Polish upbringing and French citizenship. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes, and the first female professor at the University of Paris. Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity (a term coined by her), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. It was also under her personal direction that the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms (cancers), using radioactive isotopes.

Madame Curie is a role model, and woman with great talents who tried as hard as she could, to be the BEST that she could be. Even in times of adversity, we must try as hard as we can and never give up on our dreams!

Source: NobelPrize.org has a full biography and information on all the Nobel prize winners, including Madam Curie.

Quoted Picasso

"Action is the foundational key to all success."
"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
"Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth."
"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
"Bad artists copy. Good artists steal."
--Pablo Picasso

BE HAPPY FOR THIS MOMENT

Celebrate the diversity in everyday people, and you can create extraordinary dreams. It is the many colors of our world that blend together in an eclectic combination that made our world what it is today.



How to Be Happy
1. Relax
2. Smile
3. Take the good with the bad
4. Be thankful
5. Be yourself
6. Pursue goals that make you happy
7. Focus on your objective
8. Develop healthy relationships
9. Diversify
10. Make someone else happy, Give
11. Dance
12. Sing
13. Laugh
14. Forgive & forget
15. CREATE!


(Create image by Columbia College Chicago)

Want more? Visit How to Be Happy from wikiHow