Something Beautiful

Okay, this one is going to be very stream of conscience because it is late and I am barely.

Just had a lovely visit with an old friend over tea and chatter, catching up, and swept away by how lovely a woman she is, and in a quick browse over the web once she had left, a faint feeling that something was awaiting, a sense of immanence. Brush over etsy and there in the recent listings I find... this card. A digital overlay imagery of butterfly and tiger eyes, subtle and haunting... such exquisite beauty.

Actually while that piece alone was nice, not really riveting, it sent me on a trip down the weblines to a site of two brilliant artists. I'm wandering around it, seeing so many things of invention and alchemy and sheer aesthetic glory... it was one of those satori moments as I looked over every piece of art and jewelly - a virtual window shop into a fantastic Oriental little market stall of wonders. I see pieces that JB would love, or Arkay, or Kimiko... even my kids, my mother. And yet... not quite anything that is just for me.

I am awed by the creativity and intuitiveness that artists like these can pull up out of dormant materials, out of inorganics such vibrant living colour and form. Awed, and I admit it, deeply envious.

The thing is, after a browse over literally every piece they had to offer I am both frustrated and inspired. Inspired by the creativity, the purity and the invention of the images and jewelry, and always frustrated by my own fragmented talents and means to make the things I see in their work, and the awareness that no matter how good I could become as an artist of any media, my work will always leave me cold while that of these artists sings to me. Frustrated also knowing I would love to own a piece made by such hands, but I'd wish for something custom to me, that didn't just resonate vaguely but rang me like a bell, strummed me like a harp string. They are already so close... if they could just see into me, they could play an entire orchestral etude in beaded, silver, copper, glass and paint... I would never look away from that piece. It would make of me Narcissus.

And yet... stung by images as beautiful as my dreams, I *want* so badly. I am sore with the writhing bittersweetness of it.

So synchronous that I feel I had been primed for the moment, like a canvas, a pump or a gun. A surface prepared, and the finding of those artists can't be the whole of it. Immanence remains, a dull throb behind the ache of desire to build, make, paint, create.

And I am left holding thread and hook and a limited craft and even more limited talent. It is the ambition that is limitless.

I wonder if the ostrich ever dreams in memory of flight.