Art and all aroundness

So I'm doing these big watercolors with words on them, with people's faces and then words coming off the top of their heads that somehow are a summation of their lives.

At least that's what I'm TRYING to do.

Anyhoo, as I sit there and think of things to say I worry that I'm not including everybody in the world, that somehow big sections of life and people are being ignored.

But on the other hand, how the h-e-double hockey sticks would I be able to include the entire world, it just isn't possible, is it?

When Julie and I were in Madrid a couple of years ago and we went to the Prado (which is the BEST museum, I really liked it), we saw the Diego Velaquez masterpiece, "Las Meninas"...here's a link http://silencio.weblog.com.pt/images/eyes/DiegoVelazquez-LasMeninas.GIF

It's a fantastic painting, really one of the best ever and the first thing I thought when I saw it was, "he did it, he painted the whole world."

That was weird and that thought quickly left me as I moved on to more important topics like where can a guy and a gal get a cerveza around here? (My spanish begins and ends with asking for a beer and then asking for another one, please).

But how eggs-actly did he paint the whole world and was that just some frazzled misfiring of my sorry synapses? I mean, if you look at the painting all you see are a painter and his subject matter, who seem to be a motley crew of kids, midgets and animals. I don't even usually like a painting or a novel (don't get me started) where the main character is a painter or an author.

Maybe it's the big space above the people that does it, with the one man halfway up the stairs. I don't know.

But I'm thinking that Deigo Velaquez didn't start out to paint the world, it just happened. In the same lesser way, I should not worry about it either and just do what seems right.

By the way, there's a big exhibit of Goya's work in New York going on now at the Frick that's gotten rave reviews. Here's the web site: http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/goya/index.htm

I checked quickly and didn't see the Black Paintings of Goya which if you do ever go to the Prado you should see. They would be hard to miss, but you never know.

I think the Frick show are paintings that Goya did late in life, and I think the Black Paintings are too so I would think they would be there. They are unbelievable, really something completely different than a lot of his early work.

Goya's very early work is turrible (I say that non-judgmentally) and relegated to an out of the way floor of the Prado -- if you wanted to like have a foot race in a museum or sompin like that, it would be a good place to do it. There ain't nobody there.

But then he hits his stride and does the Maya paintings which are great, that one about the Third of May and that one family portrait that's got to be one of the wackiest portraits ever done, it's AWESOME:
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/g/goya/goya_family.jpg

Then came the Black Paintings and hoo boy, he let's it all hang out:
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/g/goya/great_he-goat_dtl.jpg

I guess he painted the black paintings on the walls of his house, and later they removed them and gave them to the Prado.

Anyway, he's one of the best, I put him in the upper pantheon of painters:

1) Rembrandt
2) Goya
3) Arne Westerman
4) Michaelangelo
5)Velaquez
6)Rubens