I am powerless over the compulsion to amass books (an adaptation of AA’s first step). I have walls of books and my chair is surrounded by several tall piles that are all urgent reads. Most of them are books that friends or favorite authors endorsed…people whose reading I trust. But some of them arrived mysteriously…I happened on them in a used bookstore or discovered them when I ventured down appealing rabbit paths while in the middle of a search on Amazon. Frederick Franck’s The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation arrived in such a way—a kind of serendipitous gift.
“This book is handwritten because, in its way, it is a love letter, and love letters should not be typeset by compositors or computers.” Frederick Franck
Franck directs the reader/artist away from drawing for a result only and centers on the process that engages the eye, the hand and the heart. He opens the door to the inexperienced and the tentative to join encouraging us to “realize you are not ‘making a picture’. You are not being ‘creative.’ We are just conducting an experiment in seeing, in undivided attention.”
“Seeing/Drawing is such a way of inscape from the overloaded switchboard. It establishes an island of silence, an oasis of undivided attention, an environment to recover in…” Frederick Franck
I think it would be truthful to say that self-promotion and self-consciousness are two distinguishing interior workings of the artist. Wanting to be liked and doing what it takes to advance that favor seems necessary to making the whole art gig work. (I think this applies broadly to all the arts). Franck sees these working against honest creativity and truly seeing… “a world that is fully alive.”
“Who is the man, the artist?...he is the unspoiled core of everyman, before he is choked by schooling, training, conditioning, until the artist within shrivels up and is forgotten. Even in the artist who is professionally trained to be consciously ‘creative’ this unspoiled core shrivels up in the rush toward a ‘personal style’ in the heat of competition to be ‘in.'"Frederick Franck
“Millions of people, unseeing, joyless, bluster through life in their half-sleep, hitting, kicking, and killing what they have barely perceived. They have never learned to see, or they have forgotten that man has eyes to see, to experience.”Frederick Franck
I have included some helpful links for more on Franck..in the "links" page to the left..
9/3/10...I just received a copy of A Passion for Seeing-On Being an Image Maker..looks really good.
When, o when, will they start a Bookaholics Anonymous? And will those of us with that affliction have the courage to deal with it? Probably not.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing so many gems from this book.
I have not yet seen it as a real problem.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, Laura.