It's a new year and, as for every beginning, we wish it to be a good one. What's good, of course, is relative and subjective. So, with each of us wishing for a good year, there are bound to be conflicts among all those incompatible goods. Still, I like to think there might be some universal ones, like peace. I know: if wishes were horses, beggars could ride. It seems worth it to keep thinking beggars might ride. In any case, it seems impossible for some of us not to keep wishing.
New Year's brings out customary but odd habits. Not the staying up until midnight and drinking champagne (if you're lucky). That's dandy so far as I'm concerned. But the typical old year's reckoning and new-year's resolution-ing is not something I want to do. Not personally, and not more generally in terms of the society in which I live.
But it's unavoidable: the new year coundown of "best" (and of course it also brings to mind "worst". To me, there seems something so culturally sad and diminishing about going through "the 10 best hits of of the old year" and similar lists. We still like to do it, though my own lists hardly match up. The flip side to our customary backward-looking reckoning is all the forward-looking resolutions we project into the future for bettering ourselves or our world, There's something reassuring about that forward-looking, I suppose. A little optimism about our own decisiveness for future action. So I'm picturing a petty con-artist saying to him/her-self, "Yeah, tomorrow I'm gonna quit all this petty theft and get into some serious crime!" Well, we do what we can.
I was wondering when this habit of new-year-resolutions started. Seems it has ancient and religious origins. Thought the seasons differed, the ancient Babylonians made promises to
their gods at the start of each year (Spring) that they would return borrowed
objects and pay their debts. Whereas in the winter, the anciet Romans began each year by making
promises to the god Janus (January).
We're hardly surprised when, yet again, our actions disappoint our resolutions. No one holds us accountable for them anyway. So what if, instead of momentous resolutions, we just decided, "keep being humane each day"? Does that sound too defeatist, not striving enough? How about just trying to be decent, as a good friend of mine once said? I'll try that.
So what have I got to show for the new year? Fortunately, since I set myself up for this one, I've got a new art show, with its opening reception next week:
FLOW: Nature, Art, and Mind. Some of the paintings from my previous exhibition on the same theme are included, as well as many additional ones.
Here's the write-up:
FLOW: Nature, Art and Mind is a collection of abstract and
expressively representational paintings that seek to capture the dynamic
energies of land, sea and sky. Inspired by the natural world on Saturna
Island, Strayer depicts the shifting currents amongst natural forms,
which serve as a daily reminder of the delicate balance of geo-organic
life. The seemingly solid Earth is alive with telluric energy and
tectonic shifts, the Sea with oceanic flows, the Sky with atmospheric
currents . . . each interacting to form and transform our world.
The exhibition is at Place des Arts in Vancovuver, a large and friendly setting that will be showing three separate art exhibits simultaneously: mine, those of another painter who uses alcohol inks in lovely abstract compositions, and a photograhic work that is quite dream-like. You can read more about it all
here.
The exhibitions run until Feb. 6, ... enough time to set your resolution? Happy New Year.
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Regards, Janet
