Looseness

The interesting thing about authenticity is that the more we think we need to work on it, the further away we get. Authenticity tends to be more nested in looseness and spontaneity than rigorous planning and overworking. 

A painter and art teacher I sometimes watch on YouTube tells her students to make a copy of a John Singer Sargeant work which turns our fairly well but then when they paint their own originals they go back to a stiff and perfectionist style which chokes the finished work. They have lost Sargeant's loose brushstroke mastery which inspired them in the first place but which came from the artist's soul. 

Many of us use copying in the place of originality to make our way through the world when what our psyche needs are the inspiration which comes from within and feeds our uniqueness. It is why pack mentality suits but also limits and hinders us.

Yesterday I was speaking with my aunt in Madrid (my mother's younger sister) and she reminded me that when I was about four I would dance in a little dress and find joy in it but over the years it was taken away from me through a societal indoctrination which was also fed into unwittingly by my mother. 

My aunt is greatly accepting of me at age 79 (she calls me Joanna) and tells me Madrid is replete with gender variance which does not surprise me in the least.

As I go back to oil painting I am applying that same looseness and joy to everything I do. You dance as if no one is watching because they aren't but if they do who the fuck cares.