Daily Nourishment for August 9, 2024: The Art of Seeing with Virginia Woolf and Georgia O’Keeffe
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 45 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 15 minutes
“The compensation of growing old [is] that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained — at last! — the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence, — the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light.” - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Pause.
Take six deep breaths with a six-count inhale and a six-count exhale while looking at this art by Georgia O’Keeffe.
Prompt.
Read the following quote by O’Keeffe and then look at the painting below.
“A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower — the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower — lean forward to smell it — maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking — or give it to someone to please them. Still — in a way — nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small.
So I said to myself — I’ll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New-Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.
Well — I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower — and I don’t.” - Georgia O’Keeffe: The Poetry of Things
Georgia O’Keeffe, Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow, 1923 (Georgia O’Keeffe Museum)
Practice.
Set a timer for 10 minutes and write in response to the Pause and Prompt above and/or the items below.
Make a list of five things you want to attentively see today.
Make a list of five things you want to attentively see in the coming week.
For you, for this particular season of life, within your current reality of your unique circumstances, what are three things that will help you attentively see today and in the coming week? What postures and practices will help you see the items on your lists, “turning them around, slowly, in the light”?
Journal or take notes for a few minutes on seeing, attention, and anything else that comes to mind.
Want More?
—Read chapter 38 from The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other on a visio divina experience at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can read this short chapter here.
—“Georgia O’Keeffe on the Art of Seeing”
—“Virginia Woolf on Why She Became a Writer and the Shock-Receiving Capacity Necessary for Being an Artist”
—Daily Nourishment: August Again with Virginia Woolf
Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Charlotte Donlon.
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