Visible lines

My favorite art movement is impressionism and Paul Cezanne is often associated with it. While I did enjoy the exhibits, my take away from it was more personal then I expected. Cezannes work is full of inconsistencies, illogical constructions, and things that generally “don’t make sense” to us now and to his contemporaries then. Examples include differing visual perspectives, object lines that don’t meet, and incomplete sections. And yet, he was a master — a master because of these not despite them.

What I choose to take from this is that, while I may never claim to be a master, I can reject the “rules” that culture, art, society, and more put upon me if they don’t serve me, if they don’t help me become better. Cezanne’s master lay in the fact that he knew intimately when a work was finished and it was finished because he said so. These finished works would be consider drafts, failures, or incomplete by some opinions and standards of art today. Some work contains visible sketch lines, different brush strokes, incomplete sections. And it was complete because that was what it was meant to be.

My life and my work, creative or otherwise, does not need to be polished perfect. I am allowed to live with what others might perceive to be drafts with visible lines and incongruities and changes midwork. What matters is that I have done the work. That I have excercised craft. And that I have decided when it’s complete.

This last concept is something that I think many have trouble with. People often stop short for many reasons, when it gets hard, when there are competing priorities, when it’s “good enough.” These aren’t bad reasons. They might be very necessary depending on circumstances and goals. But for me, for the values that I hold closely and am trying to align with, working to completion with deliberation might be the best approach to living the authentic life that I want.