“Don’t make the same mistakes twice or you won’t have time for the rest of them.” – Anonymous
It’s just that sometimes you don’t get enough out of the mistake the first time!
I mean, if you can’t enjoy your mistakes to the fullest, what’s the sense in having
them in the first place!
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“When it comes to staying young, a mindlift beats a facelift any day.” Marty Bucella
Changing the outside because you don’t like the way it looks isn’t a bad thing, but disatisfaction like that is more than likely seeded in your mind, not your face.
Renewing your mind is a LOT harder than work on the outside, but it is a lot more fulfilling and long-lasting.
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“Be ashamed to die before you have won some victory for humanity.” – Horace Mann
No pressure……
Define ‘victory for humanity’. Does supporting the livelihood of the local donut shop owner count?
When I was younger I use to think changing the world, showing my ‘important’ art all over would be my victory. Then I had a family and I realized raising my kids right was the best and truest victory I could be part of. So, if my kids are reading this, thanks for helping me get that little victory!
Not that I plan to die anytime soon. I have to wreak havoc with grandkids and great grandkids before I do that!
drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“Busy souls have no time to be busybodies.” – Anonymous
This is drawn in honor of a friend of mine, a real Baroness from a Barony far away.
The most recent story is of her finding a way to turn two gossiping, malevolent souls away from the empty pleasure towards the true pleasure. The true pleasure is, of course, to talk about others with the intent of understanding and helping instead of
diminishing and debilitating.
To do this she uses a pretty hammer that can nail a balloon to a cross without the balloon knowing it’s been deflated and reblown as a good heart.
Of course, she knows she will have to use her pretty hammer again and again, alongside her sardonic screwdriver, sassy saw, artsy awl and crazy crowbar to work these balloons into her vision of good and God but she will do it and say ‘That was fun’.
She is crazy, over the top and the best thing to happen to her island nation since the explorer first arrived.
“I am not one soul, but many in one person. That is why I have many soul mates through life, not just one.” – Marty Coleman
“You can live to 100 if you give up all the things that make you want to live to 100.” – Woody Allen
I really think many people, especially in the USA where I live, are so worried about living a long life that they focus exclusively on how to stay alive instead of WHY to stay alive!
I remember starting to go to the gym in about 2000 or so. I had just got divorced and wanted to get out and do something. I felt fat, paunchy and out of shape.
Going there made me think about what the purpose was behind being fit. What was I being fit for? To live a long life? No. It was, and is, to live a good life. To be good to people, help them, care for them, build them up, teach them, learn from them and give to them. At the root, it was so I could love.
You can’t love if you are dead, you can’t love very well if you are sick or incapacitated. You also can’t love if all you are doing is paying attention to staying alive. So, it is good to stay in shape, but it is more important to know WHY you are staying in shape.
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” – Frederick Chopin
Simplicity isn’t just about the art having simplicity, it is about your mind having simplicity. It means you have a mind dedicated to essence of creating, not the complexity of finding a ‘style’. It means a mind focused, a mind free and a mind pure.
My favorite artist is Henri Matisse. His radical and expressive color work (Le Fauves) is beautiful. His Moroccan period is sensual. but it is his simplest of line drawings, his simplest of paper collages done at the end of his life that excite me the most. Why? Because all the ingredients of 60 years of being an artist had been distilled into an simple, glorious dish. A dish a younger Matisse could not have understood or wanted to pursue. He was like a master chef who learns what doesn’t need to be in the dish.
What doesn’t need to be in your dish?
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“Love your enemies, just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards.” – R. A. Dickson
Of course, you will then have a new set of friends that will, in turn, turn into bastards. But at least you will have known that already since that is why they were your enemies in the first place!
By the way, that is the first time I have ever used ‘turn turn’ in a sentence. Though I have sung ‘turn turn turn’ before.
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” – Voltaire
That’s all, just remember to sing. It makes the rowing easier. However, if you sing any Barry Manilow songs sharks will come around your boat and eat you.
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot grasp the fact that a human foot is more noble than a shoe and a the human skin is more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed.” – Michelangelo
It is human to decorate oneself, but humanity starts without decoration and that is often forgotten. The puritan impulse that still flows through America and elsewhere looks for something wrong with the unadorned and naked. We do it without being conscious of it, like a remnant racist not being aware of their own prejudice.
A huge industry has made many people a lot of money building on this. I am not talking about pornography, which at least has some semblance of honesty about it. At least you know what they are trying to evoke in a person. I am not defending porn, just stating that we know what it is and what it is trying to do.
I am talking about marketing and advertising. That is the industry that plays us like a fiddle. That is the industry that tells you to look for the skin and in the next breath tells you to cover it up.
What Michelangelo knew was that for all the finery Florence and Rome in the Renaissance could display to the world, it could not outshine the beauty he found in the human body. And considering the fact that his nude sculpture, ‘David’ is probably the single most popular object of any sort from that era, his statement has been proven true.
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
