(Lebenkuenstler) Life Artist

Not long ago, an old boyfriend in Switzerland said to me:  "You are a real Lebenkuenstler."  I had just explained to him about my latest endeavors in bodybuilding, competing and fitness modeling.  When we were spending time together in 2005-06, I was a banker...in Zurich...pinstripe suit and all.  Yes, I seem to be something of a master of reinvention.  Whether with intention, or by necessity, I tend to make the most I can out of my life.

"Lebenkuenstler" is a German word and connotes a person who approaches life with the zest and inspiration of an artist, although he or she may not be working recognizably as an artist.  It quite literally means "Life Artist."

I enjoy it as described here:   "Imagine making art, not with paint or clay, but with life itself as your medium. A “life artist,” or “Lebenskuenstler” as the Germans would say, is someone who finds beauty in the colors life puts at their disposal, someone who makes do with the brushes they’ve got and doesn’t pout over a few mistaken strokes." (http://randallszott.org/lebenskunstler/)

In my years on this planet, life has certainly put some "colors" at my disposal and I have tried to find the beauty in them all - some times more successfully than others.  Smile.

My latest reinvention of myself as a bodybuilder and fitness model seems to bring a more literal interpretation of the term to bear.  While most people may not recognize bodybuilding as "art," it is certainly an aesthetic endeavor, using the body as the media.  Rather than chipping away at marble or molding with clay, the body is sculpted by adding muscle and subtracting fat until a desired detail and symmetry is achieved.  I wish to discover and demonstrate what is possible with every new day.

For me, indeed, as Oscar Wilde put it  "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life" and that "results not merely from Life's imitative instinct, but from the fact that the self-conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and that Art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realise that energy." 

I plan to keep making this life the most expressive and interesting one it can be, using the brushes I've got.