My friend Linda has a beautiful garden that I tried to paint twice this season. I say ‘tried’ because I think both times, I failed to capture the actual beauty that she created. Linda is the real artist here and trying to paint her work did kind of make me feel like a bumbling amateur. Both times I tried, it made me think of Plato’s denunciation of art as a copy of a form that he disliked for further removing one from the reality or truth of something. But, although I didn’t quite capture it, it seems like the counter argument to Plato is that at least the copy of the form will remain when the real form has long since withered. Also, in the process, I got to spend some pleasant hours exploring the ‘truth’ of the beautiful flowers.
