Hannah Stover

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viggo mortensen

I have maybe 20 minutes before I head out the door for work but I just need to type and let the energy flow through my fingertips. The photo above is of a fabric paintbrush holder my favourite art teacher from high school gave me. Any long lasting art materials given to me feel like gold. I used to despise the fact that I felt more free when typing than handwriting because Madeleine L’Engle always wrote in longhand before using her typewriter and I wanted to be just like that. I also don’t love being on a screen but when you self edit as much as I do, it’s a game changer. When I was 15 I started writing my journal in code because Beatrix Potter did the same and I was researching her for an art project in school. A few days ago I was reading the comments on a post from one of my current favourite artists - she was doing an art project on Viggo Mortensen and asked people (specifically middle aged women) to say why they love him so much. A lot of the answers had to do with the balance of masculine/feminine energy they perceive in him. He’s gentle but could also fight a bear, was one of the comments. Someone also said it’s impossible to picture him playing video games. I think it’s cool when you look at an artist you love and see direct ties to other people and things they have loved based on how they dress, talk, move, act. I wonder who those people are for Viggo. I think most people my age probably fell in love with him while watching him in Lord of the Rings but I probably fell in love with him the most when I watched Hidalgo. There are the people I want to be like and then there are people I’m attracted to and then there’s me and I think it’s beautiful how all of us are so many people because we want them embedded into who we are.