A handful of adjectives come to mind when I think of being an artist as a life passage. When you are a toddler, crayon in hand, not minding the black lines of the coloring page, you are called daring, rebellious, and promising. In the alcoves of the undergraduate library, ten minutes after midnight, you are called unclean, starving, and lost. Taming your gestures on a large swath of Stonehenge paper, lost in the cramped space of your studio in graduate school, whispers cry out of the visual arts building calling you out a fool trying to sidestep reality’s demands. A secret pride is not what motivates that hands in these moments, it is a realization of gratitude for being given time to step outside of the common world to synthesize its contents and become one of a line of critics that spans backwards even before the time of our known ancients.
I was late, at least I thought so. The sun had set hours before and I wiped the tears from my eyes for another night. Where muse had gone, I know not. I had no clue how to get him back. Whether sacrifice or rest would make the call to return, I did not know. What I remember is an extremely difficult first year in graduate school. The science of a staid manner I left college abandoned and forgotten. Then it was one of those mistakes I still admonish myself for. At that time I knew myself as lost, indecisive, uninspired, and weak. That was part of the dark side of the artistic personality. The classic portrayal lends a description of a skinny, dark, and tragic psychotic that is consistently poor, extremely emotive, and periodically homeless. Everyone knows what they are getting into with that person – a heaping helpful of drama, tears, and joys extremes. It is such a well known character type that posing as an artist seems ever the century’s best entertainment for a megalomaniac. For the sake of attention and fame, what will you do for a public name?
It is over a decade later and I have finally seen myself move into a post formal education phase. For me it is never the poser, but always the workhorse. The yoke on my shoulders to maintain a stance and continue working is adjusting to becoming a critic with a sound intellect and articulate voice. The time I spent and continue to spend learning art history and bridging into art theory and practice is helping me to find place and comprehend the landscape of the art scene both high and low.
Muse lends me his books and tells me to find my own as well. Reading, I know, has its place. I need to commit to the time even after the summer is over. I never could have been that artist that painted from the gut without being informed to the presence of mind and identity of the emotion at hand. I had a severe complex years ago when it came time to confess the impetus of a new body work. Relevance, relevance, relevance chimes in my mind. I had to ask myself questions regularly. Why does my work matter? What value does it have to the human complex? I could not sit quietly in the simplicity of arguments people presented in their artist statement: playing with color, sourcing emotional expression, exploring cult artifact. In other words, the body of work is a glorified class assignment, art therapy session, or an issue of copyright infringement. I fear those artists will eventually divorce from the point as their dedication is a shallow place to build a reputation on. Everyone need not be Botero and commit to social criticism of the government through his paintings of Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Everyone need not be Cindy Sherman and eviscerate popular culture’s identities in photographic crispness.
The level of intimate reflection that motivates to action is in the artist’s arsenal next to brush and ruler. I am making a decision to look at difficult conceptual pieces of the post-modern age. On an ordinary day I would have shunned the mental rigor. I may not grasp the witticism or comment, but I will get there. As for my work, I am in the books for a while longer. I may find kinship and reason in history supplementing playful abandon on paper. Whatever I read cannot help but become a part of me and coming work. Abstraction and primitivism as a language to convey experience and emotion are where I sit as of today. Coming to a reflective rest after reading, I may find a wrench in my philosophy. I may seek reason to retire from the world. I may find solace and comfort in my ancestors. I may find a place in the universe. Whatever I find I might want to play out in pen, ink, and words. So be wary, I may find more than one flailing tangent to wrestle publically in coming posts.
~As ever, stay hungry and curious.