"Happiness vrs. the Unhappy Soul - I LUST For Passion"

"Flight" 24x48 oil on canvas by Kathy Ostman-Magnusen

"Happiness vrs. the Unhappy Soul - I LUST For Passion"

I was prompted by someone dear to me to consider what happiness is and how to find it. I must tell you ahead of time that I am an artist and my consideration of happiness might be distorted from yours.. yes you may think so. My approach is that we are ALL floundering to find our way. We stumble, recognize the pebbles and sometimes boulders and then? We continue on because we have learned a few things. (?)

Take me with a grain of salt and perhaps your own conclusions as well.

You can't let anyone, be it spouse or lover, put you in a 'specific' box,  just because you don't know what kind of box works for you.  Just because what makes them happy does not make you happy, does not mean that you can't be happy, once you FIND what makes you happy.  You can't settle for what someone else loves in life, just because you don't know yet.  Just because you don't feel the same as another person, does not mean there is something wrong with you.

Here is what "I" think...

Happiness is a very elusive thing... overrated as I have said before to some who know me.  It comes in spurts.. and I think most times we don't recognize it when it is...

ALL AROUND US... 

and then...

It is gone.  

We have to try to see it when it is there though and then begin to embrace it. The more we do, the more we will understand what there was/is about it that makes us feel that way.  I think it is much easier to cradle.. coddle even, pain and the dark side.  I do that... that is what art is about to me. I am just being honest as an artist with the artist's soul I was born with.  I have always said and felt too, that there is nothing particularly "interesting about happy".  It just isn't that interesting... and does not spring forth any great works of art.  There are many who would beg to differ with me... and I understand their approach to things, but it just does not work for me. Am I doomed for depression? At times I guess yes. A bitter pill is swallowed and I hold it within my trembling hands before I partake... each and every single time.  

I just watched the movie, "Modigliani" Here is the theme song at the end... 



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbaiMd3AnjI&NR=1

I think it so fitting that this is the end of the movie... the credits, as if it is our very lives being considered.  

Consider...

I think there is a part of ME that does not really want to be happy... in happy there is no art, not what I consider to be true art... no true passion and the mere fact that it is so fleeting makes it too fragile to deal with.  So again I go back to "What is INTERESTING about happy?" 

There is a spot inside everyones soul that seeks to understand their passion... and so they eternally lust after it.  I do.  You do, even if you deny that it might come artistically... it does.  If God exists at all, it is in creativity.  He/she... IT... IS CREATIVITY.  Consider flowers in the desert. To deny that part of yourself.. or for me to put it on the shelf, is in fact the greatest sin.  But as I wrote... this is just me, take it or leave it.  

I say...

FEEL DEEPLY

SEEK WHAT YOU FEEL WITH A LOVERS LUST AND FEED THAT PASSION.

And if you don't know what it is?  It is NEVER up to ANYONE else to tell you or to confine you in theirs...

the RESPONSIBILITY IS YOURS.  

This is after all... YOUR LIFE.

Life is fragile and yet... difficult to kill.  We give it away or we honor it... it is up to you and up to me to do with it as we will.  

The mix of happiness and unhappiness is so that we will know the difference.  

We are not in Africa watching our baby being held high with a sword... that is not unhappy, that is evil.  So we can't confuse those things with atrocities. We must recognize them though.. because it takes true passion to overcome evil.

Back to being happy?  IS IT in those fleeting seconds that are within a song that makes us feel that we can indeed fly?  If so, that is passion known.  

To neglect it is like leaving a baby on the side of the road unattended.

Pick up the baby...IT IS "YOU".

by Kathy Ostman-Magnusen
copyright 2009

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I Don't Paint Fruit-Tori Amos "Sugar" I Want to Inhale It!

"Primal Block Party" There are 4... can't remember offhand which one this is. Its a 12x12 consisting of 9 3x3x2 canvas blocks.. by me of course!



This is the BEST painting music! As nuts as it might sound to someone else who does not get as caught up in the erotic pleasures of painting on canvas or clay between ones fingers shaping a sculpture......I could play this one single song all day long and not get enough. Art is being swept up not sitting in compacentcy painting fruit.. sorry fruit painters but that is my honest opinion if you ever want to understand the passion that can flow through your pores.

My new Blip.fm profile... sooo cool!

http://blip.fm/profile/KathysArt

This song is at:

http://blip.fm/profile/KathysArt/blip/1015999

What is Passion in Art - Does Desire Elude or Even Scare You?

"What is Passion in Art - Does Desire Elude or Even Scare You?"

Passion in art, do you know it? Do you long to melt into the colors of red and dance with the latest voice expressing desire? Does it penetrate your very being, till you feel you can barely breathe? Do you feel restless and think that you will never 'get there'?

I know what passion means to me, and I find the very word abused and over used.

I decided to do a search on passion art. I wanted to see what passion means to other artists, maybe fulfill my need for going through a gallery. I typed said text in on google and saw image after image of nothingness. I became bored after the 5th page of square after square, of work that presented what others had decided to label as passion.

So what is it?

Why does it elude so many?

Maybe you do in fact feel blood rushing to your head at the sight of a still life. I can only express the fact that I have been searching for passion for art, all my life, it is the very core of my work, yet I know, I will never obtain its secrets.

I guess I am on a soapbox for passion.

The dictionary describes passion as a strong and barely controllable emotion; a state or outburst of emotion; intense sexual love; intense desire or enthusiasm for something.

More over used words: intense; emotion; desire.

Somehow I just don't think those emotions can be stirred up, within anyone's being, while viewing a bowl of fruit.

There is a real dichotomy with art. Some want to understand it; ask it to give them more; enlighten them towards some electric realization of cosmic fortitude.

And some people seek it out to place above their couch, match its color; stay in its place never asking anything but calmness ... with no questions asked.

Of course there are some questions people are prompted to ask if they are in love with those little cottages, light coming from the windows with a path leading to peaceful spots of a tired mind. People ask themselves, (and I am supposing here) "What do you think the people in that little cottage are having for dinner? Or is it a family like mine or wish I had?" Memories and nostalgia are stirred in some people, I am guessing. Is that passion though? I concede, maybe to some, but not one single bit to me.

I met a man who told me that he only likes poems that rhyme. Humm, I thought... limericks then? How mind bending. I am suggesting that if you feel that way, that a poem is not a poem unless it rhymes, or a painting is only blessed if it matches your couch, that you challenge your mind to hope for more.

Every single painting or sculpture, every poem or story I create, makes me feel uncomfortable and discontent. If you are an artist, or a lover of art, I believe you want that. It is passion reaching back at you, taunting you, to feel heights you have not yet reached.

While sex can and often does include passion, or at least we hope it does! I am not writing about sex per say, I am suggesting that passion, in its rawest form, should not be misconstrued as something that does not elude to something more. It should compete with ideas already set in your mind and cause you a sense of abandonment of your own being, if not for a moment.

Passion is emotion that is ready to explode and there is no resting place in sight. I want that! I want every stroke on canvas to exhume that. If you are a love of art or an artist of any genre at all, you should want that too. To find a resting place in art is to find boredom in the end. Can you soften your mood with art? Can you mend your own wounds while painting a vase of flowers? Of course you can. But, seek out passion, know it, embrace that elusive treasure. It will not cause you to feel 'comfortable', no, but it shouldn't, that is not its definition. Will you ever get there? I would answer no as well.. it is just barely out of reach, so kehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifep reaching!

by Kathy Ostman-Magnusen
copyright 2008

By the way... past the passion, lol... click the title at the top and see my house that is for sale. It is now 275K which was really the correct price!

Aloha, Kathy

The image is of my painting "Primal Block Party 1" 12x12 of canvas blocks of 3x3x2's. Contact Monkdogz Urban Art in NY, who represent me, if you are interested in buying it.

http://www.monkdogz.com

My work is being exhibited now in "Zepher", and International art show.