spring time

I just posted a new book in the library--actually, of course, it's an old one--Modeling My Life written by American sculptor, Janet Scudder.

Here is learning by heart:

"I had been out in the garden playing with the flowers. The colors evidently stirred something latent in me for I can remember, as distinctly as though it had happened yesterday, the feeling of intense excitement that swept over me and carried me into the house and up to my grandmother...

"How did they ever get these beautiful colors?" I demanded breathlessly, holding a small bunch of flowers out towards her.

"She put her hand and touched me and then the flowers--for she had been blind for many years--and very solemnly and impressively explained that colors were given flowers by God.

"He painted them!" I gasped.

She nodded, still very solemn.

"How?"

At this she laid down her knitting and her voice came a bit uneasily. "Why do you ask me that, my child?"

"Because I want to paint some just like them. I've got to! I must!"

I am sure the creative instinct was born at that moment. I knew that I had to make something beautiful. I just had to express in some tangible way the strong emotion I was experiencing over the beauty of the flowers...

Poets and writers have grown into the habit of calling this desire to create something beautiful the divine fire. Divine Fire! Perhaps it is that. Surely it is divine in the joy it gives. I have always thought that incident with the flowers--even though I was only six--must have been a tiny little flame from a great fire.

Art credit: Spring Time by Ludwig Knaus (artrenewal.org)