excerpts from my journal (2)

20.06.2024 - a letter to an artist i envy that i will never send and is perhaps too vulnerable to share on substack, but then again - what isn't?

There’s something about you that fills me with such sorrow. You are everything I wish I could be and everything I know I will never be. I admit at first, I was jealous. A craft that I had spent my whole life learning, you perfected in years, just a few years. My jealousy only lasted so long before it was replaced by awe and wonder. I can’t be as wonderful as you, as much as I wish to be I don’t know if I will. I don’t know how to be as great an artist as you so I will live vicariously through you.

Have you been to the Louvre? How are the statues? The Classics? The glimpses of the Renaissance in paint brush strokes? Do you know of Monet’s Water Lilies in the Musée D’Orangerie, or his garden in Giverny? The house he spent his final years in? I wish to visit an art museum with you one day. I wouldn’t even speak a word, I would just listen to yours.

What do you think the artist was trying to say? What do you feel when you see the piece? What’s your favourite movement? Artist? Artwork? Style? It’s personal, I know, but I would love to see your sketchbook. Show me the pages in your sketchbook that you would never show the world, never show even the people closest to you. An artist’s work speaks volumes on the artist, after all, our art is only a reflection, and extension of who we are, so what makes you, you?

I hope one day we meet and we can talk about art, and life, and love, and loss, and feelings. I hope if - or when - that day comes, I will be as great of an artist as you are.