God's stupid brother, beauty and being brutal

Via a certain Harry Emerson Fosdick comes an account of an unspecified East African tribe -

"They say," reports an observer, "that although God is good and wishes good for everybody, unfortunately he has a half-witted brother who is always interfering with what he does."

It seems this brother or maybe his geek son was at work last week interfering in the technology that is usually a reasonably well-behaved servant to the business of painting pictures. The week was spent having to completely re-install the OS and software on my rather new computer, a process that brought with it more juicy opportunities for his activities.

So the painting that got put on the back plate got joined by everything else while I grappled with this half-wit.

But here's an interesting thing - he may be annoying and sometimes downright infuriating, but in the bizarre way of things often ultimately helpful. As it turns out this dude - or his wicked little sister - is very well known in myth and folklore.  Crystalinks has this to say about one of his guises-

The trickster is an important archetype in the history of man. He is a god, yet he is not. He is the wise-fool. It is he, through his creations that destroy, points out the flaws in carefully constructed societies of man. He rebels against authority, pokes fun at the overly serious, creates convoluted schemes, that may or may not work, plays with the Laws of the Universe and is sometimes his own worst enemy. He exists to question, to cause us to question not accept things blindly. He appears when a way of thinking becomes outmoded needs to be torn down built anew. He is the Destroyer of Worlds at the same time the savior of us all.

Reading that I was a little perturbed to realise it's a pretty good description of, well,  me.

"... points out the flaws in carefully constructed societies of man" ? Check. 
"... rebels against authority" ? Double check.
"... is sometimes his own worst enemy" ? Um. Errr . . . Check.
 "He exists to question, to cause us to question not accept things blindly."  Right on. Etc.

Now it's rather interesting that the painting I'd intended to take off the back plate last week featured this character, a street person in a group gathered on the pavement to listen to a band playing. This guy and his woman were by far the poorest people there but also by far the most immersed in the event. I'd wanted to call the piece 'The Fool and His Wife' but I doubted it would be understood as a reference to The Fool in the Tarot pack - one of the guises of said trickster - and instead as a slur on street people.

It was his vitality and intelligence that turned him into a subject for the piece, and as usual the painting transformed subject into something else. The beanie he was wearing I'd at first thought to make into one of those pointy hats worn by king's jesters of old, but that didn't work so it became colourful without the baubles and ended up rather like a jolly crown. His blue windbreaker became the burgundy robes of royalty, and even the collar of his shirt took on the feel of a chain of office.

So he became 'King of Streets' but I'd also toyed with titles like 'The Alchemist' and 'Magus', and again according to Crystalinks "The trickster is an alchemist, a magician, creating realities in the duality of time and illusion." That's a pretty good description of the function of the Artist too.

So obviously this guy's important to me. I related to the subject well enough to devote 3 months of agonised tweaking in search of a solution. Probably it's a sort of self-portrait but then that's true of pretty much every painting. Come to think of it the fact that it turned into such a mission makes sense, given his role.

But to get back to what was supposed to be on the back plate and my struggle with "chick art". I realised on returning to it what my dilemma was. The head had been originally laid out as dark, almost black, but along the way its colour and texture became so beautiful that I fell in love with it. I was so afraid of losing the beauty that I became creatively crippled, the painting as a whole suffered, and I ended up hating it too. Sounds like a typical love affair doesn't it?

Also sounds like a job for the trickster.  Kill that holy cow for the sake of what lies beyond. Hell, I'm still in love with it, but I realised rather grimly that I just had to get brutal and move things on.

So I got to work with some sandpaper, some inky dark paint and a rather large brush, and here's where things stand at the moment. Much as I mourn the loss of the delicate beauty of before I must admit I'm far happier with the piece as a whole.

There are many metaphors and lessons that come to mind in this exercise for life, love and being human in general, but I'll leave those aside for the moment. Probably they'll come up again.

Meanwhile there's work to do. The show must go on.