The painting above is called “Mountains and Sea“. It hangs in the National Gallery of Art and it was created by Helen Frankenthaler, a famous American abstract expressionist painter. I started researching Helen Frankenthaler because I read one of her quotes, and it reverberated with me. Here is the quote:
“Every canvas is a journey all its own. There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.”
The word “canvas” can be replaced by so many other words in this quote and still make so much sense. “Life” works. “Season” works. “Relationship” works. “Vocation” works. I think this is an utterly divine quote.
Helen Frankenthaler also said this:
“I don’t resent being a female painter. I don’t exploit it. I paint.”
To give this quote context, Helen was born in 1928. She did most of her major works in the 1950s-1970s. During this time period, art was still dominated by male artists. Today, we seem obsessed with labels. We label everything, even by giving people labels that essentially mean “label-less”. I think the people who are arguing for and against categorizing people in certain ways, are missing the point. Labeling anything takes away the individual essence of anything. So if anything, we need less labels. The quirky cardinal who frequents my yard and likes to noisily bark at me to remind me to fill my feeder, gets severely limited in the way of his own special individuality when I call him “cardinal” or “red bird.” Of course, he doesn’t give a damn what I call him. He doesn’t “resent being a male red cardinal. He doesn’t exploit it. He flies.”
“What concerns me when I work, is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it’s pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is – did I make a beautiful picture?” – Helen Frankenthaler
Sometimes friends or family will discuss one of my blog posts with me and they will say “thank you, they really need to hear “such and such message”, and sometimes that message which they supposedly got from my post is a message which is equally new to me, as well. And I am so delighted by this. I believe that really good art, whether it be paintings, or poetry, or dance, is a medium that brings people closer to their own inner selves. Really good art stirs people’s emotions and inner worlds and messages from their intuition like nothing else can do. Really good art makes us more open to exploring what is behind the hidden doors of our spirit. The only thing that I ever want people to get from my writing, is a feeling of understanding and more intimacy with their own souls.
“In relations with people, as in art, if you always stick to style, manners, and what will work, and you’re never caught off guard, then some beautiful experiences never happen.” – Helen Frankenthaler
With this quote, I believe Helen is saying to live and to create with a little imagination and fearlessness. Sometimes you have to change course, add some extra ingredients, don’t get stuck on the “tried and true”, in order to experience magic in your life. Is there anything as cheerful and interesting as a “pleasant surprise”? Or as Helen Frankenthaler says it plainly in this quote:
“I’d rather risk an ugly surprise than rely on things I know I can do.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.