A Woman in Stages

The above is a painting by Edvard Munch titled Woman in Three Stages. It holds me deeply and I feel it more than I have felt anything in quite a while. It makes me want to get hold of oil pastels again and doodle, expressing emotions in the only avenue that seems to be able to get them out of me these days - color and shape. Of course words help, but sometimes, just sometimes, words are too complicated an avenue to express what is roiling and boiling inside my chest and heart. For those moments it must be a visual medium such as paint, oil pastels, or photography.

Unfortunately I have not been able to get outside and do my pictures because a) I have been quite ill; and b) it has been too cool for me to go outside and look for interesting images around my home.

It would be nice to roam a graveyard for gravestone pictures, but this requires getting Hubby to go with me, and sometimes it would be nice just to be able to roam and take pictures as I see them without having to talk overly much or explain why I am photographing this or that. My eye sees things differently, it seems, from the rest of humanity and most assuredly my husband.
And, I cannot draw worth a lick! Still, sometimes it isn't the object that is being drawn, but the very act of drawing and selecting colors to share the emotion itself is what is most important.

The sharing of emotion is what seems to keep drawing me to Edvard Munch's creations of late. In each painting, drawing, picture that he produces he shows emotion. The emotion not only jumps out at you, but it itself, is screaming from the canvas itself. It is emotion everyone can understand in their own particular way in their own particular time in their own life that makes his artistry so important.

Another artist who touches me in the same way is Georgia O'Keeffe. Her works are beautiful. Sad. Thought provoking. Important. They have an importance even if it is to no one else but her, and us because they were important to her - a circle.

Perhaps it is time to pick up paints and oil pastels again for me, and pencils so I can express the currently inexpressible.