Gardening with Matisse

Henri Matisse's art is not always necessarily my thing - the above Blue Nude (one of a series) is really the only one I enjoy beyond simple art appreciation - but his approach and his fervor do resonate with me. Painting was what he loved, and what drove him, and his stubborn refusal to knock it off and get serious is something we could use more of. Enough of what we should do and people say we must do. Let us do what truly brings joy to our lives! So much of doing what we think we should do is motivated by fear - fear of the unknown, fear of insecurity, fear of judgment. That's no way to live; no wonder people are so full of neurosis and confusion.

Matisse got a lot of criticism for painting "frivolous" things like flowers; people said people wanted "serious" subjects and that the world didn't have room or time for his kind of compositions. To these critics, he replied that "there will always be flowers for those who want to see them," and that's the very crux of the matter - maybe we "shouldn't" waste our time on pointless art in small galleries or bother with any piece not displayed in the Louvre or the Guggenheim, or with anything painted this year...but what kind of life would we have if we didn't make time for the flowers? There will always be people who want to look at flowers without worrying about what they should do, and I hope there will always be flowers to see for those people, because they are doing it right.

All this is a very long way of saying that I am planting these next spring for a glorious midsummer and I want to see flowers at all times.