Food and Family

As a slight divergence from the themes of my previous blog entries, I’m going to write about something that I almost always finish, and with Thanksgiving coming up, I would venture to say that it is pretty relevant:

I can't stand leaving food unfinished. 

To be honest I don't know what goes through my head when I pick up the last few bites from my plate and force feed my self while my stomach is on the verge of exploding, but it never seems to fail. Then I spend the rest of the evening feeling mightily uncomfortable and wishing that someone had an antacid.

Let’s face it. There is something about scraping perfectly good food into the trash that just makes me feel like some horrible, ungrateful, wasteful person. And so the alternative is? Eat it. All of it. Despite the tension around my belt. I don't know if this is primarily an American mentality, but I know several friends who can sympathize with me, and I have some social theories as to why this is exactly. Perhaps one cause is the old saying that I'm sure quite a few of us heard at the dinner table as children: "eat your food, because there are children starving in (Insert China, Africa, or whatever country your parents deemed to be more unfortunate here). This saying doesn’t make sense now, and it never really made sense to me then, either. If children were so starved that they would gladly eat the spinach that I would have rather tossed out, then why didn't we send it over to them? Was my stomach some sort of secret teleportation device that transported food over to hungry kids?

Of course, I’m being slightly facetious. Surely the saying was meant to help us appreciate the food that we had, because there are other people who have nothing at all. It’s a stretch to say that such a simple saying could be the primary cause for childhood obesity, but I do think that it could have attributed a bit to our guilty consciences when we leave food unfinished. Another factor is simply the fact that America’s culture is so familiar with having excess, and the reality is that people are used to taking more than what they need. This is a habit I personally have been trying to break. Instead of piling my plate with food so I don’t have to go back for seconds, I’ve been trying to eat in shifts. I start with the vegetables, go back for the grains and proteins, and return once more if I’m still a bit hungry. This helps me control all that goes into my stomach, while sparing myself from feeling guilty at the same time.

Nonetheless, on Thanksgiving Day, even with all my past experiences of accidentally having one too many biscuits, or unwisely squeezing in that last slice of pumpkin pie, I will probably overdo it. But hey, the food has been made, and what better way to be thankful to the hands that prepared it then by trying out every single dish on the table? It’s an American holiday, after all, and like it or not, the sharing of meals has long been an important factor in regards to holidays and family gatherings. Not that I’m complaining.

Unfinished Art

There are few things that make me feel guiltier than leaving a painting unfinished, and yet I do it all the time. At first I thought it was just out of sheer laziness when I would give up on half-finished art (which may very well have been the case). Now I think that maybe I refuse to finish things primarily because, at this point in time, I simply do not have the amount of artistic skill that is necessary for my vision to be brought to life. I think its okay to recognize this. I might try and sketch something out multiple times, while attempting to pin down the feeling, the emotion, or the thoughts that are swirling around in my head.  In a way, working on a painting is a lot like writing a story. You might have a shadow of an idea that you formed in your childhood that gradually grew and developed itself more within your own mind as you gained more ideas, read more, or experienced new things. That's not to say that you couldn't have written down your idea as a child, but it's very likely that it would lack the depth that one often desires their stories to have. The same can be said for producing art. I have several ideas that have yet to see the light of day, and still others that I would like to one day attempt to do again. But over the time that I've pondered my visions, they have steadily developed within my mind, along with my skills as a painter.

I'm not implying that finishing a piece that does not live up to my expectation dampens the idea any. I can always try to rework a painting, or completely start over, and then I would have something to compare my work to and learn from. In fact on one rare occasion I actually did this--I completed an entire painting that took me hours upon hours to do, then showed my teacher, who said that she wanted me to change something about it but it was impossible to do without starting over completely. So I did. I took every idea that worked really well and drew it again, only this time I knew exactly what I was looking for and how the space would be occupied. When it came to the things my teacher wanted me to change, I already had an idea of what worked and what didn't. I made less mistakes on my second drawing, and when I finished it I was much more satisfied. Holding the two paintings up to each other shows some drastic differences and it was really encouraging to find out how much I could improve something on the second time through. But it certainly takes more effort. Many, many extra hours and loss of sleep, in fact. And sometimes I just don't have enough time to waste on working on paintings of paintings before finally being satisfied with a piece of art.

I really probably should start doing more unfinished sketches and drawing and paintings, at least to get my thoughts down visually, and then later I could always go back and flip through a jumble of incomplete ideas while deciding which one I could tackle. You know, sketching is like writing too. More like journaling, maybe. It gives you a chance to collect your thoughts and saves them for a time when they would fit in with a bigger picture. I should really sketch more.

Perhaps the reason I don't really does come down to my just being lazy. But that is besides the point.
What it all comes down to, as I previously read in a book on writing, is that no idea is sacred. Just as one sentence in your first draft may not be completely necessary or beneficial for the whole story, the same can also be said about brush strokes on a painting. Sometimes you choose to do something that does not benefit the picture's balance, or you may even begin an idea that you realize you are really not all that interested in. Why waste time pushing through a painting that you don't really want to do (Unless it's a commission of course. In that case you better knuckle down)? The reality is that art exists for you, because of you, and as an extension of yourself. Whether you do a partial sketch, or paint the Mona Lisa, you are still giving the world something that is apart of you, and that does not depend on whether something is completed or not. Even Da Vinci (you can tell I admire him, huh?) had some unfinished pieces that he simply never got around to. And you know what? They're still beautiful. Not in the same aspect of his complete, fully-realized work, but in that it gives you a glimpse of his thoughts, and the process he went through to bring his more better-known pieces to life.