Dolce Vita - Sweet Life – Laurie Maves ART
Try to swim, keep your head up.
Kick your legs, never give up, boy.
And if I could I’d turn it around.
Let me out
I wanna get out now.
You know the feeling when you’re in too deep.
And then you make it out the taste so sweet.
Sweet.
Sweet.
Singer, songwriter, Dave Matthews, wrote this song called, “Sweet,” one morning when his son was learning to swim. I kept listening to this song this past year and it just fit where I had been, where I was going, a metaphor for my current life’s situation.
When creating the body of work for this show over the last few months, one single word continued to surface and float around in my brain over and over and over.
Sweet.
Sweet sixteen, high school sweetheart, sweet on you, sweet turned sour, turned to stone. What does it mean to have a sweet life? To live the sweet life? To have and to hold a sweet life? As well as a life not so sweet? The word just kept coming up over and over. What does it mean to recognize when to write, when to paint, when to stop? Throughout 2012, I learned most importantly for myself as a painter, as an artist, as a person, “When to stop.”
These paintings represent a personal journey that can easily be reflected in the lives and eyes of others. Not to become overly metaphorical or simplistic, but what does a sweet life mean to you? To live one’s passion, to not have to work, to work a job that is your passion, to find your passion, to live your passion? To have experiences that are bittersweet? Experiences that let you know you are alive? When we have gone the distance, we realize that “distance” can only be achieved by taking the paths we have, to have made the choices we made, and to arrive where we arrive, once we have learned when to stop.
A sweet life is a journey recognized for what it is. We can be bitter, we can be at a loss, we can be lost and never found, or we can find our own sweetness, our own dolce, in what we choose to do, how we awaken, and how we seize our own daily lives our own VITA.
I am grateful to be mindful of my current pursuit of happiness. It is my right, it is my dream, it is life’s dessert. I hope you enjoy the frosting along the way.
