Eve 1

I don't think I've captured Eve's likeness here . . . I tend to idealize things: 
people & objects into my idea of them rather than how they are. I'm working 
on that but it does bring to mind all the other things in other facets of my 
life that I probably endowed with qualities that weren't really there. Can 
I even be a judge of what is really "there?" As a painter or any kind of artist, 
are we creating or observing? More than likely, both, but I've listened to 
instructors say "paint what you see." I believe they're being honest but 
suspect they "see" with more than just their eyes. They've developed a 
faculty that the rest of us are just beginning to comprehend. I heard a piece 
on NPR about the deaf . . . that they "hear" through vibrations in their bones 
and even cells, that hearing isn't just a matter of functioning ears. Laurie 
Anderson experimented with this in the eighties.


As a junior in college, I volunteered to shepherd a freshman art student who 
was blind. She wanted to paint and I wanted her to sculpt, where I thought I 
could actually help in developing her artistic abilities. She insisted on painting 
which I thought was a waste of her time and mine. I think of her often---Naomi. 
I wish I had a clue then about "seeing" without eyes. I might have done a better 
job at helping her visualize the marks and colors she made on the canvas and 
helped her to organize them in her own realm of visualization. She was blind from 
birth, and it strikes me now that Naomi could "see" in her mind. Her 
stubbornness about painting had a wisdom I couldn't understand at the time.