Excerpted from the book review segment of The Creative Mom Podcast, Episode 2
LIVING COLOR: A Writer Paints Her World
Those of you who are writers are likely familiar with Goldberg. Her Writing Down the Bones has been a seminal book for many writers, and Goldberg sort of ushered in the whole "freewriting" movement that ended up being used by many creative writers and even in many college writing and English classes in the 90’s.
Goldberg is known as a writer – both fiction and non-fiction. But Living Color chronicles her exploration of painting. I pick the book up from time to time, and every time, I'm really drawn to her paintings as well as to the way she writes about painting. The book is full of photos of her painting, and they are wonderful... quirky, full of color, and life, and unusual perspective. She painted many many many cars, trucks, and buildings.
I had to laugh that she got started painting by borrowing kids watercolor sets from the art teacher at an elementary school where she was teaching. Such a basic beginning, but interesting, too, because to her, at the time, painting was a real side-line. As she writes, "Mostly I was playing. Writing was the eldest son being groomed to succeed. I put all my effort into writing. Painting was a younger child left alone by an exhausted parent. Each day after I wrote and taught at the school in Taos, I could go out in the late afternoon and paint green chickens and cockeyed red goats."
Her whole approach to painting and color and form is really refreshing. It wasn't what she studied. Instead, she went with her gut and let her love of color flow. The result is really cool and fresh and unedited feeling. I love looking at her paintings, and every time I open the book, I get really inspired, again, to start painting. I read her words, and I think, "I just have to do it."
Lving Color is a really inspirational book. I encourage you to spend time getting lost flipping through the photos. They’re saturated with color. They leap off the page with color and life and a bold creative eye that makes me want to smile. Then, read the book. Goldberg is a master at weaving together story and self-reflection and philosophy into a unified thread that is at once both personal and instructive.
Goldberg has made many, including me, want to write. But with Living Color, Goldberg makes me ache to paint.
Posted by amyo at June 22, 2006 03:59 PM