Wax Rosebuds

I do not paint artificial flowers, and now I know why - in that way one has known something forever but without words to explain.     

I have a friend who says that monsters live amongst us and look just like people.  I have come to agree with this, and I believe that the "monster" is not something that is there, rather something missing.  Scientists would tell you that one in every 25 persons is a psychopath, a person lacking a conscience (think about that next time you go to a group event).  Some who study this phenomenon believe that psychopaths lack souls.  I agree. 

To explain the dangerous nature of superficially charming psychopaths (people who do not feel genuine remorse though they may feign it for affect) and the way decent people are taken in, Robert Hare in Without Conscience quotes from William March's The Bad Seed (1954):

"Good people are rarely suspicious: they cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic solution as the correct one, and let matters rest there.  Then too, the normal are inclined to visualize the [psychopath] as one who's as monstrous in appearance as he is in mind, which is about as far from the truth as one could well get . . . These monsters of real life usually looked and behaved in a more normal manner than their actually normal brothers and sisters; they presented a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presented of itself - just as the wax rosebud or the plastic peach seemed more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thought a rosebud or a peach should be, than the imperfect original from which it had been modeled."

A wax rosebud, perfect in shape and color, taking on the identity of a delicate rosebud, but without scent or bruise on the petal...charming, smiling, flattering, proclaiming virtue, but, void of empathy and always comparing itself to the real thing and always falling short...knowing it does not have a soul and taking pleasure in destroying what it cannot have. 

I do not paint wax rosebuds because I have a soul.  Originality makes up for any imperfection, and, after all, there can be great beauty in imperfection.