BEAUTIFUL STRANGERS
Life can be weird sometimes! You can go from being complete strangers with a person, to being friends, to perhaps being more than friends, to being complete strangers again, in what can feel like a blink of an eye. Don’t get me wrong in some cases, it’s important for that person to become a stranger so that we can learn and grow as people but in other cases, you can feel like you’ve lost something incredibly important that might never be replaced. The connections we make with our fellow humans can shape our lives in many ways and I’m sure we all have ‘strangers’ who we wish we still had in our lives as well as ‘strangers’ who we are more than happy to leave in the past. We can learn from all of them!
INSPIRED BY A STRANGER…
“And just like that, we were strangers!
Beautiful strangers destined to drift into an abstract memory.
We thought our story would be different as we painted our temporary masterpiece together.
And, have no doubt, it was a masterpiece.
Wonderful, intense, complicated but uniquely ours.
Two people forever stained on each other’s emotional canvas.
All our brilliant mistakes and forever decisions forming irreparable cracks in something once so beautiful.
One day I hope we both see the beauty in those cracks because there is no logic in the reverse.
They remind us that what we had wasn’t perfect but it was real and to us it was art.
And like all great art, our masterpiece will be forever refined to a museum of which only we have the keys.
A musuem of memories curated by us.”
CONNECTIONS
The hands from the Michelangelo painting ‘The Creation of Adam’, which forms part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, are iconic in art history and have been reproduced in many forms. Although in no way religious, as a teenager, I had this very section of the fresco painting as a poster on my wall.
For me, the hands always represented a connection between humans rather than a connection with any ethereal, omnipresent being. The moments before two people touch for the first time or possibly the moments after their last touch are frozen in time. There’s a strange beauty in that, that appeals to me way more than the religious elements of the overall painting.
Painted in 1508- 1512 we only know of ‘The Creation of Adam’ in its weathered and cracked form. 500 years can do that to a painting! Although I’m sure it was perfectly smooth and beautiful when it was painted by the great Michelangelo, I could never imagine it without the cracks and the wear now. They’re one of the key elements that formed my narrative around the piece. The painting cracks representing the cracks that form in our relationships and human connections over time and the epic fallibility of us humans. And I guess that’s why I decided to do my own ‘slightly altered’ version to go alongside this piece of writing that’s about exactly that. In this context more representative of two peoples last touch rather than their first and the distance that grows between them but still about that human connection.
JUST SHARING!
As always thanks for reading and indulging me in sharing what I create, whatever that might be. This time some writing and my own twist on a Michelangelo 500-year-old masterpiece for the title image. Anyway, I hope you’ve found something in all this that’s inspired you in some way and as always keep creating and if you haven’t already, sign up to the newsletter to stay up to date with what’s going on here in Creative Nowhere Land. See you all soon!