The Nude Behind Me
Any circumstance can be the engine of beauty and joy.
In my early twenties, just out of college and ready to take on the world, I bought a poster of Matisse’s Blue Nude II for my very first office.
It’s one of a series of nudes he created from cutting pieces of painted paper.
The Blue Nude has been my companion in every office I’ve worked in since, and if you meet with me over zoom, you’ll see her hanging over the bookcase behind me.
I love that she is graceful and awkward, beautiful and imperfect. She is both whole and incomplete and she inspires me.
In the late 1940s, Matisse underwent a colostomy as a result of stomach cancer. He was bedridden for months and then primarily confined to a wheelchair, making it impossible to paint and sculpt on the same scale he had earlier.
Undeterred, he began to cut pieces of paper and cover them in thick gauche paint while a team of assistants assembled them into the figures, plants and shapes of this imagining. In some cases, they filled entire rooms.
Matisse’s cut-outs are a massive and spectacular body of work spanning over 15 years.
" An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc." - Henri Matisse
Circumstance gives birth to change.
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, we share such a circumstance.
No matter where you sit right now, your world is changed, and the outcome remains unwritten.
Your instinct (because it is the instinct of all humans) will initially be to try to squeeze whatever lies ahead into a familiar package.
Don’t.
You are the artist of your life.
Until you have breathed your last breath, your spectacular body of work remains incomplete.
What will you create?
How will you love?
What things, small or large, will be better, stronger, more beautiful because of you?