Digital Painting and the question of value - continued

"Nowadays, people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Oscar Wilde

Mum's Mum

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/mums-mum-lianne-schneider.html

The question of value - the price that digital art commands in the art marketplace - is a complicated one. Few would argue the point that a traditional painting is a one of a kind possession while digital art is purposely made for duplication. Yet most traditional artists today have their work professionally photographed in order to produce at least limited edition prints of their "masterpiece." Museums sell prints, posters and art cards of famous works. Yet none of this activity reduces the value of the original work. I contend that the digital artist's original work was often as time consuming and difficult to produce as the painter's. [As I said in my short rant the other day, in some cases I suspect that it is MORE time consuming and difficult. How many "Oneness" paintings do you think Newman could have created in a day if they are similar to that one? Several I'm sure - yet it takes me two weeks full time to do most of my digital paintings.] And it is certainly possible that a digital artist could, if he/she wished to, limit the number of prints, or restrict the reproductions to giclee on canvas in order to increase the value of those reproductions. A Certificate of Authenticity might also reassure buyers that there is intrinsic value in a print or canvas of a digital work. But even employing those methods, could a digital artist expect to command the kind of price for even a large limited edition print than prints of an original oil or acrylic would get? 

I don't think so. In an article back in 2008, the TUTS website posted on its Design and Illustration division "54 Mind-Blowing Digital Paintings." Virtually ALL of them were Manga comics, fantasy figures, game figures, or illustrations - all brilliant yes - but none that looked like traditional paintings and all designed for digital viewing, gaming or animation. None commanded a $44 million price tag either. That has changed very little in the past six years - traditional digital painting seldom makes it into these lists and fractal art virtually never. Fantasy art and 3D continue to command the most attention and the highest prices for digital art because these forms are essential to video gaming, animation and interactive web designs. 

There IS some hope, however, whether you are a traditional digital painter or a digital abstract artist. The "hope" comes in the form of an article in Vulture by Jerry Saltz that is something of a "swan song" for the traditional gallery show. Decrying the fact that art shows go up but "without much consequence except for sales or no sales," Saltz says that internet sites now offer "high end sales" and online art auctions and that such sites are proliferating at an amazing pace. This means "art is about nothing but commerce" which is not what the gallery venue was; it was a place to engage with other artists, critics and students of art, a place for conversation and thought. He complains, "When so much art is sold online and at art fairs, it's great for the lucky artists who make money but it leaves out everyone who isn't already a brand." Art dealer, Kenny Schachter goes a step further, noting that "the higher and higher prices are for fewer and fewer artists." 

Dealing an additional blow to the gallery show, auction houses like Christie's are now providing a venue for emerging artists "unrepresented by galleries," and in this way making that art available only to collectors, not the general public. This again, is a great thing for the few lucky artists selected by such auction houses (physical auctions or online auction houses like ArtSpace) but such art remains the possession of the wealthy, and the very process, says Saltz, "makes being around art less special. Too many buyers keep their purchases in storage, in crates, awaiting resale. Mediocre Chinese photorealism has become a tradeable packaged good." 

So the narrow thread of "hope" offered by the death of the physical gallery show still offers little enough in the way of value and acceptance to the digital artist. I see "high end art" on a site I belong to and I've no idea how it was selected to be on that "high end" page. Most of the items offer a high priced original oil or acrylic, however, so I personally do not consider that traditional digital painting. These pieces were created as traditional art works initially and THEN digitized for much lower priced prints. Digital art, BY DEFINITION, is art created originally with digital tools and digital techniques. My own painting above is certainly no Georgia O'Keefe, nor does it pretend to be but it was hand-painted digitally stroke by stroke (in this case pointillist dot by pointillist dot) just as O'Keefe did her flowers. 

I am represented by a small gallery in upstate New York but sales in this gallery tend to be original photography or original oil/acrylic works, sculpture and jewelry and that is primarily who is represented by this gallery - photographers and traditional artists. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare. I have friends whose photographic art (photographs altered by applying textures or recomposing several photographic images) is licensed by high volume publishers and while I consider their work to be art in the truest sense of the word, and I'm incredibly happy for each of them that their artwork is popular enough to make a living from it, that is not the case for most of us who are digital artists and digital painters. Saltz ponders the question of the future of medium sized and small galleries by asking, "I wonder if a much bigger shakeout is about to happen, one that makes art resemble any mainstream business." And if it's just business, is it art? 

The question of value then is multifaceted. Does a piece have value because it's in a traditional medium, because the critics like it, because a gallery is willing to show it, an auction house willing to auction it...or is its value based solely on market forces. Can a digital work even begin to compete and if so, how will the value of such easily reproducible art be maintained or even increased? If I were to license and sell 20,000 copies of the digital painting above would that make it more or less valuable as a work of art? If I master the business tools of social media, online art sites, self-promotion, looking at trends, checking out decor magazines for hot colors, do I do that at the cost of the actual artistic merits of my work? Or am I just smart enough to realize that digital art and digital painting are not meant to be measured by the same standards as an original oil and that its very accessibility and availability to the average person who loves what they see and can actually afford to own it makes it more valuable? I think the day is coming when a person will look at a digital painting and say, "I love that painting...Oh good, it's digital - and that means I can own it!"  Value is really not so much in the medium as in the eye of the beholder as well as in the heart of the artist who created it. 

Digital painting and the question of value...

"Wow, this painting is great! ...oh, it's only digital." 

Kelley McMorris

Outer Harbor - South Entrance
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/buffalo-south-entrance-light-lianne-schneider.html

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a wonderful illustration posted on Facebook that had been reposted from artist/illustrator Kelley McMorris' blog. At the top was a sketch of a digital artist thinking and planning his/her next digital art creation - paying attention to light, form, composition, color, message. This kind of thinking goes into the creation of a digital work BEFORE one ever puts pen to tablet just as it goes into creating a traditional artwork before putting brush to canvas. At the bottom of the illustration, however, was another sketch of the same artist sitting back in his/her chair and saying, "Computer draw me a horse." The two sketches demonstrate the difference between what actually happens in the process of creating a digital artwork and what the public perception of such art might be.

Until I took up digital painting, I probably suffered from the same misconceptions. Now, I know better and, like many other digital artists - illustrators, cartoonists, 3D fantasy creators, fractal artists as well as digital painters - I'm anxious for the day that digitally created art is perceived by both the public and gallery owners and art critics as valid and valuable art. That day has not yet arrived. Few critics can even agree on what constitutes "digital art" let alone consider it for the rarefied atmosphere of upscale galleries. Isn't most photography digital now? Photography as art seems to make the cut for what constitutes "fine art" though photo composites and significantly altered and textured works are not viewed the same way. Besides, I don't recall any photograph ever bringing $44 million at auction. (I'm speaking of the recent auction price for the Barnett Newman "Onement VI" painting that looks like a blue ping pong table top).

I hope you'll pardon my outrage about this but just because some ritzy art critic decided to tout Newman's series of paintings in New York art circles doesn't make it art, let alone art worth $44 million. Perhaps it's the "little green monster" at work in me, but I can assure you that a great deal more thought, time, effort, reflection about mood and message went into my digital painting pictured above than went into this work. Give me a roll of blue painters' tape and a gallon of oil based house paint and I could create the match for this in red or yellow or whatever color the critic might like. Then there is the $75 million for a 1950 Rothko, or the $148 million for Jackson Pollack's No. 5...but I'll stop there.

There is debate even within the digital painters' circle though about whether what we do is merely a duplication of traditional painting techniques or an expansion of them, and further whether a work created specifically for reproduction and print, even in limited editions, could ever have the value of a singular "original" traditional painting. So let's dissect the process and the question of reproducibility versus value.

Writer/artist Stephen Danzig contends, "Within the digital creative matrix is a human consciousness that must utilize the traditional processes of understanding line, color theory and subject matter - its linear function is the same by definition as traditional processes and must be judged and valued accordingly." There is some agreement about the similarities in the creative processes. According to the Wikipedia article on digital painting, "As a method of creating an art object, it adapts traditional painting medium such as acrylic paint, oils, ink, etc. and applies the pigment to traditional carriers, such as woven canvas cloth, paper, polyester etc. by means of computer software driving industrial robotic or office machinery (printers)....'Traditional digital painting' creates an image in a stroke-by-stroke, brush-in-hand fashion but the canvas and the painting tools are digital." 

I consider myself a traditional digital painter because even though I work from a sketch or a reference photograph, I apply each stroke and color in my painting individually just as if I were working with acrylics (my previous traditional medium) on wood or canvas. I work doubly hard to create the effect of tooth, texture, brushstrokes - aspects of a finished painting that would be automatic using traditional materials. I am not talking about programs - and there are many excellent ones on the market - like Corel Painter that will "clone" a photograph and convert it into any kind of painting with just a few keystrokes and the push of a few buttons. (Not that that is as easy as it looks either!) I am talking about starting with a blank "canvas" or a simple black and white sketch and actually painting each brushstroke, being responsible for color mixing, type and size of brush, desired output style, proper lighting and so forth. Even using a reference photo - as a painter would use a model or paint in plein air - does not negate the incredibly detailed work the true digital painter has to do.

This is where the disagreement often begins about the merits of digital painting. It is both harder and easier than traditional painting, I think. It is harder because as J. D. Jarvis, the Museum of Computer Art's contributing editor says, "Digital artists work hard to mimic the effects of gravity, absorption or resistance and interaction with grain and texture that happen naturally (or by chance) with physical materials. And, since these "accidents" shape the nature of such material-based work, digital tools force us into devising new virtual techniques." I have to use digitally rendered effects like "noise" or "grunge" or canvas texture to give my work the same kind of dimension and texture a physical painting would have. But it's easier and more freeing too for several reasons. Contrary to Stephen Danzig's assertion that digital art has the same linear function as traditional art, creating a digital painting or illustration is NOT a linear process. It is a layered process. Some of my digital paintings or digital composites have more than 30 layers. One folk art painting I did had 84 separate layers before I was even remotely satisfied with the final project. This is a major difference but one that should bring added value to the finished output. "Digital tools offer production techniques ...such as multiple undos and the ability to save and combine previous renditions of a single project and, thereby, allows us to risk pushing a composition in a direction that while it may have destroyed a physical work on traditional materials, only brings a digital composition greater depth and more polish. If nothing else, we are allowed to know that flash of inspiration wasn't really a good way to go after all and can return to the previous undamaged state. For this reason alone, digital compositions should be the strongest, most polished and thoroughly explored compositions in art and, at the same time, the most spontaneous." 

To be continued in Friday's post....

Velveteen Rabbit and the magic of touch

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

Leo Buscaglia

Velveteen Rabbit a painting by Lianne Schneider

Sometimes the only thing a person needs is the touch of another person's hand. Sometimes there is nothing that needs to be said but, "I need a hug."

A poem I wrote some years ago...

Giving up? Or merely letting go?

We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. –Joseph Campbell

A Song of What Will Be

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/a-song-of-what-will-be-lianne-schneider.html

 
Daniell Koepke, founder of the Internal Acceptance Movement, speaks of the wide gap between what it means to give up and what it means to let go, to accept things as they are. She says, "There is a big difference between giving up and letting go. Giving up means selling yourself short. It means allowing fear and struggle to limit your opportunities and keep you stuck. Letting go means freeing yourself from something that is no longer serving you. Giving up reduces your life. Letting go expands it. Giving up is imprisoning. Letting go is liberation. Giving up is self-defeat. Letting go is self-care."

We've probably all struggled at some time or another with this difference and often our unwillingness to let go is a sign that we see that act as giving up, as failing to live up to our own standards or promises. We don't see letting go as an opportunity to change for the better or to move on to a greater sense of self-worth or happier relationships. Particularly when it comes to relationships, we have a tendency to cling to the past, even to romanticize or idealize them. Letting go of someone we have loved intensely, someone WE chose, seems both an admission of failure and a betrayal of a love we promised would be everlasting. Too often, even when someone breaks our hearts, we just cannot make ourselves let go. We lie to ourselves, in fact, calling our determination to stick it out even when the relationship is brutally demeaning an act of hope. 

I've watched friends hold on to relationships that were abusive, destructive and completely unfulfilling. I've stayed with relationships myself that totally undermined my self-esteem, convinced me that I was not "good enough" to merit a fully loving and intimate relationship. I've rationalized the choice to stay as the result of how I was raised, the way my Church defines love as all giving and no getting, self-sacrifice, and loving without expectations. To expect something from another is selfish love - or so I was led to believe. I've continued to love through hurt after hurt and comforted myself with the idea that I was a person of my word, faithful to my promises. That's all well and good but cold comfort when all one has at the end of the day - or a life - is a chimera.

But through all that I've learned a lot of valuable lessons and I hear the same thing from others who have finally been able to let go of the past - whether it involves a relationship, a career failure, a loss of a friend or loved one, a pet, or even one's long lost youth. Says American Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, "To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit." To let go is to release our spirit to soar and dive, to find its own heights and depths. To let go is to believe in a future that is "more." To let go is to forgive not only the "other" to which we cling, but ourselves for not having the courage to untie the ropes that have bound us to the past.

So it's important not to confuse giving up - on a dream, a relationship, a goal - with letting go and moving on to what is still possible, to becoming who we were meant to be. While this post is primarily about relationships, the same truth applies to our efforts in other areas of life too - our art, our careers, our lifestyle and health choices. We can't keep repeating the strategies of the past that did not work and expect them to work the next time! Don't give up - but do let go of what is not serving you. When I first tried to take this lesson to heart and put it into practice, I wrote this poem to express my willingness to finally "let go."

A song of what will be.

I released the anchors around a heart

that long tied me to a clouded past,

to heartache, need or suffering,

unknotted sturdy ropes that bound me

to a dock of mournful memories.

I've felt the churning chaos of life's storms,

wild whitecaps of my search for self,

endured those times I was becalmed,

adrift in open ocean without breeze

or sight of islands of safe refuge.

But now, as if by heaven's gift

I feel the westerlies begin to rise,

to clear ghostly cobwebs from the deck;

winds fill white sails to billowing,

and give gentle lift to my silvered hair.

I see myself standing at the helm

with new confidence and clarity,

a bright vision in my eager eyes

of inspiring ports of call to find

before life's journey ever ends.

With prayers to some universal source

as I set my course for parts unknown,

I imagine new horizons I will find

and give thanks for all my future joys.

The Gift of Failure

“There is no such thing as failure — failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”

Oprah Winfrey

Ride the Peace Train

One of my favorite blogs I follow religiously is a blog called "Brain Pickings" - a site I only discovered because a dear friend pointed me in that direction. The author, Maria Popova, is articulate, extremely well-read, refreshingly insightful and she always writes on art and literature with such a perfect sense of what is important in the work she's reviewing.  The author herself calls Brain Pickings a "weekly interestingness digest." 

and she'd be right. I've yet to scroll through the Sunday edition without getting caught up in the valuable lessons she shares through the work, writing and art of others, not to mention her own remarkably astute commentary. 

A few weeks ago, I marked an article to read later and then, as often happens, forgot about it in the crush of springtime activities - Easter, family visits, my Mom's 90th birthday, etc. But once I had a brief moment to go back to the file, I discovered this marvelous gem amidst all the other great articles on the Blog. It's an article on a subject we've probably all encountered but often neglected to dig into - failure. We avoid the topic because it has negative connotations, particularly in a society where it's often "winner take all" and "dog eat dog." Even our television shows express clearly how we feel about this subject - "Failure is not an option." 

We reject it because it has negative associations for us - failing damages our self-esteem, destroys our dreams, labels us as less than worthy. Or does it? As this marvelous quote above from Oprah Winfrey suggests, there are a gazillion lessons in failure and as many treasures to be found in those lessons that we would not learn any other way. It IS why and how we change direction and find another way around what seem to be insurmountable obstacles. There really could be no true success without a willingness and a capacity to accept what failure has to teach us. 

Popova's blog on the Gift of Failure comes from the title of a book by Sarah Lewis - 

The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery.  Lewis is the former curator of the Tate Modern Gallery and MoMA and a member of President Obama's Arts Policy Committee. In her book, she uses the example of Thomas Edison who tried endlessly to create a working lightbulb and said of his efforts, "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work." I think there are so many valuable lessons that Popova and Lewis have explored that I'd like to turn you on to the blog site with this introduction: 

Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Crucial Difference Between Success and Mastery

You  won't  be  sorry  that  you  were  introduced  to  this  wonderful  online  source  of  profound ideas  and  insight guarantee.

Speaking of failure, however, I wonder if you noticed that there is no link beneath my own artwork above. That's because it's not posted on any of my sites yet - and it may not ever be. I've reworked this piece 100 times - starting with a simple photograph that was small and not terribly good to begin with. But I loved the composition of the piece and I was listening to Cat Stevens singing Peace Train one night and decided to try to do something with this. I consider this work a "failure" in the sense that I've not managed to achieve what I hoped with it - it doesn't "deliver" the feeling I wanted it to. But each reworking teaches me something new about digital art and painting and that's invaluable to me for the future. I may not ever finish this work to my satisfaction but what I've learned by failing to do it has stood me in very good stead in other works. 

My beautiful Mom is 90!!!

“The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole,but true beauty in a Woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she knows.

And the beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows.” 

― Audrey Hepburn

Luella Mary Kendall - Lorne F. LeMieux

August 31, 1943

Today, my beloved mother celebrates her 90th birthday and I'm so incredibly happy to have her with us still. I remember a psychic once telling her she'd live to be 92 and that upset her...she didn't want to live that long, she said. But here she is - still in relatively good health, enduring the aches and pains of later years with barely a complaint, still driving occasionally, cooking, and working daily on the computer to complete the most expansive family tree you could imagine!

For all the poetry I've written, including pieces about my children, my spouse, friends, my siblings...I've never written one about my mother. I just never could find the words to express everything I feel for her - not just boundless love and affection, but admiration, respect and sometimes a tiny bit of envy, if you must know. She is, as you can see, a beautiful woman, and she honestly has only grown more beautiful with age.  Her hair is pure silver, like her dad's, and naturally so - no tints or toners. Her eyes are still a rich dark brown and are alight with the contentment she has always expressed at being exactly who she wanted to be her entire life - wife, mother, homemaker. And that last...home-maker...that is exactly who and what she is. 

She made our home home - not just comfortable and welcoming but a place where love was made visible in every little touch...in her knitting, the small personal collectibles that were scattered throughout the house, the books -leather bound and gold embossed - that are everywhere and for which she personally made the decorative bookshelves that hold them. She laid the floors, (seriously - pegged pine floors), she laid the stones for the fireplace, the stairway, the living room wall. Every inch of this house, which now belongs to me, speaks her name and holds the precious memories of all our times together. 

Her friends think that there is no one in the world like her - and they'd be right. There isn't. I have always said that my mother was the perfect "lady." She never raises her voice, is never ever vulgar, wouldn't swear if her life depended on it, doesn't whistle (not ladylike), and every single morning of her life, she dresses as if someone special is coming to visit - including jewelry - some necklace or broach that is special to her, a gift from her Dad or my Dad or one of us children. She's never owned a pair of jeans and wouldn't be caught dead in them! 

When I was in high school the boy I was madly in love with (and truly I was and stayed in love with him until after he died in an automobile accident on his way to ask my Dad if he could marry me)...that boy/man used to tease me and say he loved me because he adored my mother and the old saying was if you want to know what your wife will be like, just look at her mother. She adored him right back - they had art and music in common and he would come and visit with her often while I was away at college. That's where my touch of envy came in - I sometimes thought he really would have preferred my mother had he been older! 

Sadly, I am not like my mother though all my life I aspired to be as wonderful a person as she is. She was the center of my father's world until the day he died - I don't think he even realized any other woman existed. Oddly, in a way, that is true for my brothers as well - they adore her and everything we all do is somehow measured against whether Mom would like it or be upset by it. 

I dedicated my second book of poetry to my mother with these words:

"To my mother, Luella Kendall LeMieux, whose indefatigable spirit has been my guiding light and whose encouragement and faith in me has made all things possible."

I might add that her personal sense of integrity has been a model for me my entire life and in that respect, at least, I hope I begin to measure up to the woman who is still and will always be the heart of my home and the most beautiful person I know. 

We've stretched the celebrations over a three week period so as not to overtire her and there's still more to come. Just another day, she's says..."Don't make such a fuss!" If we could, we'd give you the moon - just as Dad always tried to do.  Happy birthday Mom - I hope we're both around for your 100th! I love you very much. 

Here's your favorite poem from my book, Mom, that you made me read aloud every time someone came to visit...

The Road of Infinite Grace

I met a man today,

just an ordinary man,

who taught me more about love

in one brief encounter,

about the infinite grace of loving,

than I have learned in a lifetime

of trying, or crying,

or praying or saying it aloud.

His old pickup was stopped

on the side of a country road

so I pulled over to see

if he needed assistance,

if something was wrong,

if he needed a lift.

Just a little elderly man

standing in an untended field and

as I approached I saw him

bend low to pick a flower or two,

some Queen Anne’s lace,

a handful of daisies, some buttercups,

cornflowers and purple spikes

whose name I didn’t know.

“I’m fine,” he said, “but

that was kind of you to stop.

I’m just picking a bouquet, you see -

today is my 60^th anniversary. 

My wife had a stroke two weeks ago

so I’m on my way to spend the day

at the hospital with her.

She always loved wildflowers best,

not fancy garden flowers,

they suited her, you see,

for she was just like them.

Her eyes are blue as cornflowers,

her cheeks as rosy as these mallows,

her hair had the glow of buttercups

when we used to walk this field

together hand in hand.

She can’t speak right now

to tell me that she loves me still,

but she tells me with her eyes

that she’s never wavered all these years.”

Unashamedly, I wept to see

the bouquet he held in his gnarled hand

and offered water to keep them fresh

till he could bring them safe to her.

“Don’t cry, my dear, it’s nothing much.

She’s graced my life for sixty years,

each day of them a blessing -

I just hope she’ll know that in my heart

she’ll always be my buttercup.”

       

          © Lianne Schneider 2010

This is the song my mother had played and sung at her wedding, at my Dad's funeral and has asked for her own. I hope it's a very long time before I have to find someone to sing it! 

Of virtual friendships, shared emotions and a tribute

I like to connect to people in the virtual world, exchanging thoughts and ideas, when in the physical world we might never have the opportunity to cross paths.

Demi Moore

Silent Stones
http://www.lianneschneiderart.com/Art/Digital-PaintingPhotoArt/i-jQdvNJp/A

There is a lot of talk these days about the superficiality of social media - the silly tweets about going shopping or taking a shower or getting caught up in some media/celebrity frenzy that says little of substance about who we are. I've heard some say that virtual relationships are not real - that one cannot trust them because people can assume a persona that is nothing like the person they "really" are. And that's true in some respects. People can pretend to be other than who they really are; people can use social media just as a means of attention-seeking; people can substitute superficial virtual relationships for the real thing because for one reason or another they are detached from the real world.  I don't deny any of that. 

But there is another truth regarding relationships forged and maintained through social media and a virtual environment. I've commented on it before and several of you have told me that  your marriages are a result of "meeting" someone online. I know, too, that some of you have made friendships that have lasted many years and are deeper than some you've had in the "real" world. That is certainly the case for me. Friendship is precious to me - whether it's in the physical world or the virtual one and these days, thanks to technology the line between the two can be very blurry. Skype allows us to see and speak to our "virtual" friends - as does Yahoo voice and video and other such services. I used to speak to a friend in London weekly and I prepared for that in the same way as I might have prepared for her to visit in person - I dressed for company, did my hair and makeup, tidied up the space around me, had my coffee ready to sit down together and be "present" to my friend. 

Emerson once wrote an essay on friendship in which he said, "I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, — a possession for all time." I feel that way about my "virtual" friends, too. I may choose or be forced into a somewhat isolated life for reasons of health or circumstance, but I honestly believe that my online friends know me, hear me and understand me every bit as well or better than others in the "real" world. 

Which brings me to the reason for posting again on a topic I've spoken of before - the shared emotions in those virtual exchanges. One might wonder how you can actually "feel" someone else's pain or sorrow when you can't look upon their face, or when you are simply reading their posts. And yet who among us would deny that we do. I've had friends who have reached out to me when they were terribly depressed and just needed someone to "talk" to and I've done the same. In this past week or so, friends I met on various art sites have posted on Facebook about personal loss - the deaths of beloved parents, the serious illness or frightening surgery they are facing themselves, the discouragement they feel about their job search or art careers, etc. I think we "write" our emotions more carefully in the virtual world - and express more clearly what it is we feel and need from our friends. I think we are even more generous with support, encouragement, prayers and positive thinking than we might be otherwise. 

This weekend, members of the art site, BlueCanvas, met in a way we used to meet - in a weekend forum where we shared features, poems, music, awards, congratulated and supported each other, talked about our lives at many levels and deepened our regard and appreciation of one another. That "BLUE Lounge" forum has not taken place for over a year - most of us have pursued other outlets for one reason or another, or our lives have pulled us away from that forum because of work or health or caregiving. And truthfully, the person who created that venue, carried too much of the burden of keeping the forum going - something those of you who host groups on other sites can appreciate, I'm sure. Nonetheless, this weekend, at the request of a number of old regulars, the BLUE Lounge opened again for an extended tribute to a FRIEND we lost recently - a friend almost none of us have ever met personally but whom we all loved and cherished. Our sense of loss is real, our grief is real, our desire to share that emotional response with one another, others whom we have never met either but love equally, is real. Thank you to my FRIENDS Berns, Chris and Foti and especially to Rosie for making this tribute to Aldolfo Hector Penas Alvarado possible and for reminding us of just how precious our virtual friendships are.

For Adolfo:

THE SILENT STONES

The lowering sky is mourning

gray and somber above 

the silent stones that mark

your coming and your going.

They speak naught of who

you were and yet still are -

father, son, brother, spouse,

mother, daughter, sister, spouse.

What says the marble slab of

that which only I could know?

The blessing that your were?

The joy that only you could bring?

An eloquent language of silence

drowns out the syntax

of the wind, though it lifts me

upon its transcendent current

to some place above, beyond,

farther still - past all the limits

of time or space or language

itself - past thought or sentience,

in sacred consummation,

in ecstatic communion

with your eternal thou

not bound to ashes now interred

beneath the silent stones

that bear your names. 

© Lianne Schneider 2010