Bright Conceptions and Toil

"Sweet, doubtless, were those days, and congenial to the artist's soul.  They were full of bright conceptions, which gleamed through his intellectual world as the butterflies gleamed through the outward atmosphere, and were real to him, for the instant, without the toil, and perplexity, and many disappointments of attempting to make them visible to the sensual eye."

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Artist of the Beautiful
The Portable Hawthorne

Ah, that gap between what we conceive and what we achieve.  I've always been moved by a song from the Country Western band Blackhawk, Just About Right:

My old friend,
Lives up in the mountains
He flew up there to paint the world
He says, "Even though interpretation's what I count on, this little picture to me seems blurred"
"Hard lines and the shadows come easy
I see them all just as clear as a bell
I just can't seem to set my easel to please me;
I paint my Heaven, but it looks like Hell"

 

Your blue might be gray, your less might be more
Your window to the world might be your own front door
Your shiniest day might come in the middle of the night
That's just about right

 

He says, "Man, I ain't comin' down 'til my picture is perfect
And all the wonder has gone from my eyes"
Down through my hands and onto the canvas,
Still like my vision but still a surprise"
"Real life",…

He says, "Man, I ain't comin' down 'til my picture is perfect
And all the wonder has gone from my eyes"
Down through my hands and onto the canvas,
Still like my vision but still a surprise"
"Real life", he says, "is the hardest impression
It's always movin' so I let it come through"
"And that", I say, "is the glory of true independence" "Just do what you do what you just gotta do"

 

Your blue might be gray, your less might be more
Your window to the world might be your own front door
Your shiniest day might come in the middle of the night
That's just about right