Erase the random lines away

A color study of yellow roses. 20"x10". O/c. 2013

I've been ill over the last week: a virus, a common sense would say, but I am not quite sure. I rather suspect my immune system was overwhelmed by random noise, and nonsense, and visual and verbal junk, and so it was caught unaware by a virus which it would normally have no trouble keeping in check.  

I did the only thing I could to pull myself out of it: I dropped everything non-essential. Household chores, blogs, social engagements. I didn't drop painting, and yet most of it was primarily destroying other paintings, their needy weight. 

The motto of the week was "Erase the random lines away" -- the line comes from the prologue to, possibly, the most tragic poem in the Russian language (and it has no shortage of tragic poems, trust me on this one). A poem by Alexander Blok, called "Nemesis".  

The opening lines say that there are neither beginnings nor ends in life, and we are all besieged by randomness. And above us: is it the ever-present darkness or the clarity of the divine, who knows? And yet the artist, the artist should have faith in the beginnings and ends, if only to know their hell from their paradise. The artist alone has an objective measure for what they see -- and so, let your sight be clear, Blok tells himself: erase the random lines away, and look the world's sheer beauty straight in the eye. 

So that's what I've been doing: erasing randomness in the quest for beauty.