The Peacock

I brought my sketchbook to church one day. I sat in the pew and thought about what I wanted to draw. I’d been looking at the painting Rhythm, Joy of Life by Robert Delaunay earlier that morning. Even though Delaunay’s painting is abstract, it reminded me of a peacock.

I had painted a peacock shortly after the 2016 election. I liked the colors in the painting, but I didn’t get the bird right. So I painted over it.

While the pastor talked about the body and the spirit, I decided to sketch a peacock using a well formed geometric pattern.

In his essay Pure Art and Pure Plastic Art, Piet Mondrian wrote, “In life sometimes the spirit has been overemphasized at the expense of the body, sometimes one has been preoccupied with the body and neglected the spirit” (Chipp, 354). At church, the pastor more or less said the same thing, but clothed in more theological terms.

In Greek mythology, the creature Argos had a hundred eyes. Hera commanded Argos to guard the maiden Io. Zeus wanted Io for himself, so he sent Hermes to kill him. After Hermes slayed Argos, Hera put the eyes of Argos into the tail feathers of a peacock. She transformed something ugly into something beautiful and preserved the spirit of Argos.

At home I turned the drawing into a design with Adobe Illustrator. Mondrian wouldn’t have approved. Too figurative. And he preferred rectangles.

The way I see it, I gave the spirit of the idea a new body and reminded myself that something ugly can become something beautiful.