Hello, beautiful ladies!
Welcome to letter number 8! It’s now past the middle of May, so I’m guessing things are getting hot down there in Florida – are you getting lots of use out of your pool? I love to go swimming.
This week at my job we’ve been talking a lot about Brazil, because my company has locations down there and the tax codes in Brazil are probably the most complex I’ve ever seen. Tax codes are not particularly interesting to talk about, but Brazil is pretty cool and some amazing artists have come from there.
My pick for today is Tarsila do Amaral, who was from Brazil & born in 1886. Early in her career, her work isn’t all that interesting to me, but as she got older it got really colourful and vibrant and beautiful. At one point she talked about how she’d been taught that the colors she had loved as a kid were ugly and unsophisticated, so she stopped using them, but later she decided that she loved them and would use them anyway - which is one of the things I like best about her.
In life, people will always be trying to get you to be what they think you should be…but the definition of what is cool, or beautiful, or sophisticated is always changing, so you can wind up pretty unhappy if you spend your life trying to be those things based on how other people define them; you need to figure out what you like and what makes you happy (and that changes over time, too, but that’s ok!), and love what you love with all your heart, whether it’s bright colors or neutral ones, playing sports or painting pictures, whatever…it doesn’t matter what everybody else likes, the only thing that matters is that you love it.
I can’t find the name of the big painting I’m putting in this letter, but it’s my favourite one of hers. She’s really famous for the picture of a guy with a tiny head and giant feet, which is kind of funny, but not nearly as pretty as this one. I love the colors in this, and how the white bands in the sky softly fade out. I love all the questions that this picture makes me ask. Is that a guy or a cactus in the front? Is it/he on the edge of a river, or is it/he standing on top of some kind of ball? If the moon is the yellow “C” in the sky, then what is the curve behind it? Is it another world somewhere and that’s a bigger planet, hidden behind a belt like around Saturn? It makes me happy to look at this and wonder. I also like the red/orange one a lot…it looks like radioactive beavers, swimming past the finger of a giant that’s pushing his way up from under the ground. I’m sure that’s not what it’s supposed to be, that’s just what it looks like to me.
Know that I love you both very much and think that you are awesome.
Hugs and kisses,
Auntie Paula
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