Saturday, April 30, 2011

The Year Doesn’t Matter

The year is 1882. John Bartlett publishes Familiar Quotations. Helen Keller, in The Story of My Life, states in 1902, "Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me about embarrassment or awkwardness."

The year is 1899. Twelve years after Georgia O'Keeffe's birth, she tells a childhood friend that she wants to be an artist. To Georgia the meaning of a word is not as exact as the meaning of a color; colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words.

The year is 1976. O'Keeffe is amazed at the strange spoken and written words explaining and defining her paintings. She writes a visual biography because no one else can know how her paintings happen.

Are you more visual or auditory? How does that influence the way you experience life and your work?