Art Can Be Fun When You Let It!

Sometimes the way my brain works is astounding to me, especially when something that might be obvious to everyone else, doesn't occur to me until years after it should have. Like the reasons for making art. Yes, I know that art is in my blood, in my soul, and whether or not it's a small unruly sketch on a scrap of found paper while I'm out and about or a studied and intricately executed piece on canvas makes no difference: I am called to do it. But when it is that serious piece of work, what or who am I completing it for? Ultimately, the end result should be that the work is hung in a gallery and then is sold and handed over to an art lover and out of my hands forever. But is this an essential conclusion? Should all my work be geared towards this end result, especially if the end result doesn't end up with a show and a sale? What about just making art for art's sake?

I had this epiphany recently and was amazed by the idea, believe it or not. While I have always enjoyed the work (obviously), there has also always been an element of compulsion to it, be it in the subject matter or medium and whether or not anyone other than me would like it and sometimes that leads to disappointment in the end, which is silly if you think about it. And then it occurred to me: why does there have to be a specific result of all this work? Does it all have to mapped out in advance? Why don't I just make the art I want to and if there's interest in it fine, and if no one in the world ever sees these pieces then no one ever sees them? Holy cow, this was like a lightning bolt slamming into me. And the new end result: art is fun again, rather than being the frequent grindstone it can become when all sorts of weights and strings are attached to it (even when I was the one attaching them). I do what I want, when I want. Serious, stupid, silly, odd. No worries about whether this material is archival or not and how well it will hold up because it isn't going anywhere unless I want it to and right now I don't care. And then I store it safely away and move on to the next piece. I feel light and unfettered now when I work.

After all, art isn't about how successful you can be at it, it's about making beautiful little mirrors of your soul, your heart, your intrinsic being. And sometimes those little pieces of you are just for you to see and sometimes they aren't. But there need be no overt orchestrations to make sure they are what the world will want to see, or should see. I am me and my art reflects me and that is all that matters. And I figure that since I've already sold more art in my lifetime than Vincent Van Gogh did during his, that I'm ahead of the game and life is good.

Scaredy Cat! Scaredy Cat!

Last month I went to a show at a local gallery that an artist I barely know invited me to. I had been sick the week of the opening and completely forgot about it in spite of the fact that I had it written all over the place on my calendar. When I realized the day after the opening that I had missed it, I felt terrible and called the gallery a couple of days later to see when they were open so I could at least pop in to see the work. Turns out they weren't going to be open that week, but the owner offered to open especially for me if I would like. While this is a very nice gesture on the man's part, it puts the person accepting such an offer in an awkward position. If you are the sole client that a gallery has opened for, and you don't have any sort of established relationship with that gallery, and you don't buy anything after the owner has extended this courtesy to you, then things can often be very tense, so naturally I declined. I told him that I didn't want to be such an imposition and that I would stop by the following week, but thank you anyways.

Apparently I wasn't the only person who had contacted the gallery, as I received a call later that same day from the owner who said that he'd be opening for a few hours after all as he had gotten more than a dozen calls from potential customers. So I went. When I got there, he had a few people milling about and I struck up a conversation with him about the artist who had invited me to the opening and how I had missed it and the pieces that I liked the most in the show. We talked for more than an hour and naturally when it came out that I'm an artist, he asked me to send him some photos of my work.

Now this is something that I have done many, many times in my life and it's never been that big a deal. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing easy about presenting your work to a curator or a gallery owner, far from it. No one wants to hear that their work isn't interesting, isn't what the gallery is looking for, or worst of all, that it just plain isn't any good, but this is a part of being an artist. And as your art is really a reflection of you, your feelings, and carries a little piece of your soul in each work, to be told, "thanks, but no thanks and this is why..." can be a very difficult thing to endure. But I have never left a gallery after a casual chat with someone who may or may not be interested in my work and break down and cry when I got home. Perhaps it was the stress of the holidays getting to me (as this was just after Christmas) or perhaps it was me taking stock of what I have and that I feel confident enough with to show this man, I don't know, but I know that I dipped into a very dark place that evening and although I came out of it and went right back to work on the piece I was working on, it was still quite shocking to have been so sad about being asked to submit some work to him.

Here I am nearly a month later and I still haven't sent anything. I have shot some new photos of some existing encaustic pieces that he wanted to see and have begun the task of cataloging them for him to view them with their full information, but I'm not hustling to get them to him. One moment I am strong and telling Griffin that I don't care if the man likes them or not, I am who I am and I create what I create and if he doesn't like them, then that's okay I'll survive and regardless of whether he likes my work or not then I'll know for sure one way or the other if this man would be interested in showing me. But then, I get all flustered and think that I can't handle the rejection or the criticism that's sure to be handed out, however kindly, and that I simply can't do this because it's safer to not make a move at all. I don't quite know what's going on with me, but I hope it's a phase that I will pass through soon and find my courage once again to be the artist I know I can be.

Sucky Art Class

So art classes went pretty well before I got sick. I really liked my instructor for my technical drawing classes. Then I took a course taught by a teacher who was a very nice person but had to be the worst teacher that was ever given a class to teach. Egads. She started class late every day. She left the studio for most of the time allotted: a full three hours every day. She'd set up a still life and then-POOF!-she'd disappear, wandering the halls of the museum school for most of the class. She'd pop back in and stand behind each one of us telling us what we were doing wrong and then vanish again. Then she'd return to the room, gather up her supplies and leave for the day because she needed to catch an early train to avoid having to wait an hour for the next one. She'd leave thirty minutes early, every class, and expect us students to put away the still life she had set up, the lights, the tables, etc. As this was just around the time I was becoming quite ill with a seriously abcessed tooth (who knew it would be months before I regained my health?), I really had no patience with the fact that this woman who turned out to be only an okay artist was also fast proving she sucked as a teacher as well, so I withdrew from the class. Granted it was nice to be told that I drew with the delicacy of Ingres. Who wouldn't be flattered by that? But to be honest, I'd have preferred to have been told each and every day that I sucked and should hang up my pencils and take up working as a gas station attendant and have her stay in the studio for the duration of class to having her tell me how lovely my work was and then ponce off to god only knows where until it was time for her to beat feet for the T. I had every intention of picking up another class fairly quickly, but alas that was not to be. Now that I'm on the mend and have my energy back up to fairly normal levels, I'm ready to take another course but as it's currently between semesters, I'm going to have to wait until at least Spring before I can enroll in a new studio class. I'm torn between a more advanced drawing course, an oil painting studio, or a portrait class. Eventually I could take them all, but as time constraints will only allow me to take one of them at a time, I need to give some thought as to which I want to do first. All have their merits and all are equally appealing, so what am I going to do? I guess availability will go a long ways towards deciding which one I take come next semester and which two will have to wait in the wings a while longer.