One of the best realizations you can come to as an artist is that you don’t really want to possess someone or something. You don’t want to make love to your model, take that field of flowers home with you, keep the mountains.

All you really want to do, in the end, is admire them. And your method of admiring is to look closely, maybe with your eye, maybe a camera. And you translate what you see into your art. You sculpt the model, you take a photo of the field of flowers, you paint the mountains.

That is what you really want. That is what makes you happy. Don’t desire them to be yours because your method of admiration is HOW you make them yours.

You are free.

Drawing © Marty Coleman

“The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.” – F. H. Bradley, 1846-1924, British idealist philosopher