travel as artistry

this morning as i sat conversing with my Father and thinking, something struck me. that travelers are most like artists in their pursuits.

what is an artist but one who takes from a pallet of choices and applies them to a canvas in order to represent a subject. we'll leave the argument of of good vs. bad artistry for another time. although you can check out my opinion on one particular piece of art in my june 3rd post.

as one travels choices of application are invariably made. the world--in every small village and huge metropolis, every child and adult, cultural practice and fashion style--is a pallet of colors. as i walk the streets of china, and as you walk the streets of prague or cairo, we reach out and take swabs of these colors and dab them here and their upon ourselves. think of it like making a collage. a dash of tibetan crimson, hawaiian blue, kenyan green, and moroccan yellow. applications of these experiences, these new realizations, like pidgin is tasty or perhaps that it is better to take a siesta than make more money, accumulate to produce identities. evolving identities.

this is true of all people. walking the streets of your home town you do the same thing. but i think traveling is a more active process of artistry. the spectrum is broadened, inhibitions are challenged more acutely, fears are more pronounced and thus more easily confronted.

as humans we are a pieces of craftsmanship. think of it like this, you are the white marble david, but you have been handed a brush to adorn yourself as you see fit. some do well, some others end up producing distraction from the underlying beauty and form of the sculpture. but you are allowed to produce whatever you like. for me i've followed in bob ross' footsteps, taking a fan brush, dabbed with a little yellow ocre and blood red, i have lightly painting a fluffy red beard. i am not sure where the colors came from, or why i took them from where ever they came, but i did. it's part of the way i have fashioned myself. it's the way i, as the artist, saw myself, as the subject. the real beauty of this process is that we can be reinvented again and again, though not of our own abilities. can an artist paint over black with yellow and not see that black lay beneath? even a white washing leaves the patterns of previous strokes evident. nonetheless, the slate can be cleaned, allowing for the painting of a new creation.