The healing balm of illusion

Yoddha

I was reading a book while painting this particular painting, .i.e.,  in betweens, and by saying in betweens I mean to say that as with a lot of crazy people like me when they get into this creative cloud, it gets so difficult to get out till you are done with whatever it was that you intended creating, and thus all those in between things like a cup of coffee or an odd book happen to be within the vicinity of that cloud, the result which that cloud is producing and the sights, smells sounds and whatever else it involves.

The book was ‘The Birth of Tragedy’ by Friedrich Nietzsche. In that absent minded stupor I was in, a para struck me and I share,

” Must we not suppose that the highest and indeed the truly serious task of art – to save the eye from gazing into the horrors of night and to deliver the subject by the healing balm of illusion from the spasms of the agitation of the will………… ”

Well the brilliance of the way it was said shook me. I made myself some more coffee and sat, and this time with closed eyes and thought to myself, that if my mind takes a journey into the recent past maybe the last fifty years, how much art would really fit into that category.

“to deliver the subject by the healing balm of illusion from the spasms of the agitation of the will…………”.

As my espresso kicked in I came back to my own cloud and hoped that I am doing justice to those words.