What is art to you?

Did you know you can make book requests at the library?? WHO KNEW! I have never had an issue finding a book at the library that I wanted. Ourlibrary is ginormous. Well low and behold there are several that I looked for recently at our library and no dice. Sooo I asked the very annoyed library ladies (Aren't they supposed to be sweet and old? What's up with that?) if I could put in book requests. Yes you can! We will see if it actually happens and if so how quickly, but I'm excited. Doesn't take much these days for the library addicted nerd with cloth bag in hand (actually more like the bitch with the tude because the place is always packed, o well we can pretend).

I am happy to report that I took Exam 2 today in my summer class and I think I did pretty well again. Unfortunately though I stayed up last night and tonight (meaning I am still awake and haven't gone to sleep yet) reading some more P.C. Cast books.

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Goddess of Light by P.C. Cast was about a successful interior designer whose job takes her to Las Vegas due to a very rich client. There she unknowingly falls in love with a God who just happened to be visiting the realm with his twin sister Goddess. This book was good. I didn't love the ending as much as I have the other Goddess books. It did bring back characters from by favorite book the Goddess of Spring though so that was a nice surprise. Of course I would recommend this book as well.

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Goddess of the Rose by P.C. Cast was about a woman who never felt quite like she fit in and did not understand why until she unknowingly lands in the Realm of the Roses. I would say this is my second favorite book of the whole series so far. It's a play on the Beauty and the Beast tale. Which I didn't think I would like (that isn't my favorite Disney movie) but surprisingly I really enjoyed it.

The good thing about this book series is that you don't have to read them in order and they are a fairly quick read.

Jeez I really need to start sleeping at night. The other night was so nice! When you haven't slept at night in so long, you forget what it's like to get a good nights sleep. Maybe tonight I will sleep. Doubt it though considering I have the last of the series that they have at my library, Goddess of Love, sitting next to me.

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So I have been thinking lately about what true talent is. Now what prompted this thought was two things. I have been reading on the side some books about Andrew Wyeth, a very famous painter whose family of painters can of course be tracked back to Maine. Our walls in our parents house are covered with prints of his paintings and they have many more that have yet to be framed. I even have one in my room that was given to me when I was younger, a painting of his yellow lab of course. So anyway the Wyeth's are near and dear to our hearts so we have books about him and our Dad got some more books at the library about him. As I was reading one of the books it would say that he only drew things that provoked meaning and emotion to him. And that sometimes he painted things into the image that were not actually what he was viewing. For example he would add things or subtract things from his view or he would change the position of a person etc. He is an amazing painter and it was shocking to me that not everything in his paintings where exact replicas of what his eyes were seeing. Some may not find this so astounding but as someone who loves to draw and paint I don't find it very difficult to pretty accurately draw what I see. However, I fail when it comes to trying to draw something that I am not directly observing.

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So this prompted my thought of what true talent is. In my eyes true talent is being able to create something solely from your mind that is both beautiful, amazing, and unique. The same goes for author's. Some author's seem to base their stories solely on life experiences, changing details here and there, but they are able to create great stories because they themselves have actually experienced it. That's great and everything but compare them to someone like J.K. Rowling? She had no formal training, she was a single mother barely getting food on the table, she was deeply depressed, and wrote the story of Harry Potter on napkins in a coffee shop. Her mind created a whole story from scratch. Isn't that just amazing?

Now I am not trying to in any way to disqualify those who paint what they see in front of them or those who write based on life experiences. Because these people of course are still very successful and talented. But what about in comparison to others who craft these wonderful things all in their minds and then transfer that to paper? I just find that amazing. So when I saw what my first forum post is supposed to be for my art appreciation class I knew exactly how to answer the question; "What is art to you?" Art to me is something that was created solely from the creativity of ones own mind and then transferred onto a blank canvas, whatever that canvas may be.

R