artistic-life

A person of large dreams does not allow other people__ opinion to damper his or her zestfulness. Overcoming fear of making an irreversible, lifetime mistake is the first step of living an artistic existence.

The artistic life is a long and lovely suicide precisely because it involves the negation of self; as Highsmith imagined herself as her characters, so Ripley takes on the personae of others and in doing so metamorphoses himself into a 'living' work of art. A return to the 'real life' after a period of creativity resulted in a fall in spirits, an agony Highsmith felt acutely. She voiced this pain in the novel via Bernard's quotation of an excerpt from Derwatt's notebook: 'There is no depression for the artist except that caused by a return to the self'.

Advancing towards a person__ dreams with confidence enables a person to move beyond restrictive boundaries and meet with uncommon success. Liberated from personal insecurities and eliminating useless second guessing enables a person to live an imagined life.

The supreme artist lives as closely as possible to replicating the perfect dream, with life unfolding in a manner that a person could never conceive or direct.