Mediocrity

Some time ago I saw a retrospective of Matisse's work at MOMA. I remember being particularly taken with his paper cutouts... he made them with colored or painted paper and big scissors late in his life. The shapes were simple and elegant and beautiful.
Here and there in my own work, I look for such simplicity and beauty. Lying in bed before sleep I tell myself to hunt for these things in dreams. But for me they always seem to be fully rooted in the physical world: a fragment of shell on the beach, a section of large intestine, a piece of shadow under my table.
I think I am not working much at getting at my inner world these days, not working hard enough at all. And I well know that I get out of it only as much as I put in.