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.

Two Sadly Missed Shows

I've missed so many shows I wanted to see over the last few months. Being sick has a way of slowing you down and seriously messing with your ability to get up and at 'em. I really was looking forward to seeing the Edward Hopper Retrospective at the MFA. The man was a genius with light and mood, and there's something very intriguing about Depression Era paintings of such solemn subjects rendered in amazing color. The play of light and shadow and the sense of sadness are stunning. This was a show that encompassed a huge selection of his work, including his Cape Cod paintings and even sketches. I'm still sad I missed it and it ended in August. You'd think I'd have gotten over it by now, but I haven't. Such a big baby.

Likewise, I also am regretting not getting to the Peabody Essex Museum to catch the Joseph Cornell show that also ended in August. I simply adore a good shadow box and his are fabulous. Tiny Victorian women, little buildings, and birds, birds, birds. His assemblage work is thrilling and stirs the darker side of me. And the details within each box are not to be believed. The show also had disassembled his workshop and recreated it completely down to the last detail within this exhibit. I would have killed to see it, to see where he worked and how he worked (considering this was a man who spent a great deal of his career creating his amazing works at his kitchen table).

Seldom is there more than one show at a time that's huge on my radar screen and that I would be devastated to not have seen, and here were two that ran concurrently between May and August and both of which I missed. Damn, damn, damn.

Back to School

After much hemming and hawing, I finally caved and registered for the prerequisite foundation drawing class at the Museum School, and have already had my first class. It wasn't bad at all, though I think my next class might be a bit of a comedown when we learn some basic mechanics, such as how to hold a pencil properly and how to draw different lines. Hmm. Not sure that will teach me anything I don't already know, but the first class was interesting, including some rapidly drawn still lifes. I've found that I no longer work well at a quick pace (oh! the pressure to complete a sketch within a specific time frame!) and that as feared, my basic skills are somewhat lacking in quite a few areas.

The instructor was nice: laid-back, knowledgeable, and at times funny. I've also reached the conclusion that it's okay to be working below my potential for a while if that's how this course plays out because I'm building classroom confidence (it's been a long time since I've been in school), reinforcing the basics I first learned so many, many years ago, stretching sketching muscles that have long grown stiff, and I'm meeting some pretty nice (and art-minded) people to boot. Oh yeah, and I'm fulfilling one of those pesky prerequisites I need to take more advanced courses.

No matter what, it's all good.

Speak Softly

There's a certain prejudice among many artists which is not often discussed, but is occasionally addressed in books written by and for artists. It manifests as something of a snobbery in regards to one's chosen medium, as well as one's choice of subject matter. The hierarchy of the major mediums goes something like this: oils, watercolors, acrylics, pastels/charcoals. Artists and a great many non-artists alike tend to think of oils as the pinnacle of all mediums and if you can successfully master them, then you are a true artist. I guess one can assume that the more fussy or difficult your medium, the more hoodsies you deserve as an artist. I'm not entirely sure how choosing to work predominantly in oils over, say, acrylics, makes you a superior artist to one who would choose the latter medium, but it does happen. Likewise, if you're a portraitist, and especially a portraitist in oils, then you are in theory Lord and Master, and all other artists must bow low before you. While I haven't experienced much of this prejudice first hand, I have been witness to those who consider collage and assemblage artists to be lesser artists than traditional painters, and are quite frequently looked down upon with undisguised disdain.

Personally, I find it all pretty disgusting. An artist is an artist is an artist. Everyone has different skills, choices, techniques and preferences and as such cannot be compared with those of other artists. An artist's work must stand on its own merit and need not adhere to the biases of some close-minded, shallow and preconceived ideas put forth by artists-cum-art-snobs. An artist must be beholden to no one's standards save their own. As a group artists tend to be undervalued and often misunderstood and to pick apart and demean many within our group simply because we think we're better than them in some way is absurd.

After pouring your very soul into a work, nobody wants to hear from another artist that their work is shit and is merely masquerading as something called "art," while the critic's work is the true masterpiece by dint of its medium and subject.

And Taking the Opposing Viewpoint

Some artists I'm glad I never met:

Mary Cassatt. Repetitive in a very boring way. I don't care how edgy she was considered by her contemporaries in regards to her perspectives and color palettes. I find her to be repetitious and, frankly, irritating as hell.

Gustav Klimt. Ugly people and blobs of gold on virtually every canvas.

Edvard Munch. The man's early work was delicate and lovely, but then all his subjects started to resemble not very well executed space aliens. Yuck.

Paul Gauguin. An arrogant man in his time and a tedious painter with minimal skill.

Georgia O'Keeffe. Enough with the big labial flowers and the steer skulls. This woman makes me go temporarily insane whenever I see her work.

I could fill an ocean with a list of the artists I'd rather not think about.

Artists I Would Like to Have Met

There are so many artists that I would like to have met. These are some of them:

Vincent Van Gogh. I'm enthralled with the idea that he could complete an entire painting within an hour. To work at that speed and execute the work so beautifully is an incredible feat. This concept is especially mind-blowing in regards to portraits, which are notoriously difficult. How was this possible?

John Singer Sargent. I would be humbled in his presence. His portraits are amazing: the life he infused in his sitters' eyes, the luminous flesh tones he achieved, the breathtakingly subtle lighting. His work moves me like no other artist.

Jackson Pollock. His later works, specifically the splatter paintings, are incredible in their layers of color and texture. His are among the few paintings that I consistently defy museum rules over by running my fingers lightly over their surface when the docents turn their heads (I know this is very bad). I can't help it. They beg to be touched.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir. His pinks and his reds are startling and life just vibrates throughout his works. While many works have a calming effect on me, Renoir's make me positively giddy.

Claude Monet. How could I not like an artist who couldn't let go of a subject until he had painted it to death? Having the compulsion to paint the same scene repeatedly, sometimes literally hundreds of times under varying conditions, is a man of my own heart. A little OCD can make for a compelling body of work.

Beautiful works by mind-bogglingly talented artists, every one of them.

Cezanne and the Apples

I love the work of Paul Cezanne. His landscapes are so vivid, his colors so vibrant. It's frightening to know that in this man's lifetime, he was misunderstood and rejected from exhibitions and even art schools for being without merit and talent (this was in part due to his early works being much darker and more somber than those with which we are most familiar). The man was a visionary and way ahead of his time in terms of technique. He was already halfway through his life before he developed the style that he is now known for and during his lifetime he was always the outsider, never accepted, and garnered very little success while he was alive.

As someone who has an obsession with painting apples, how could I not love a man who also spent a great deal of his time composing still lifes of apples and oranges (more than 200), and who said he wanted to "conquer Paris with an apple."? There's a guy after my own heart. I could paint nothing but apples and be happy for the rest of my life (even if I bored the shit out of everyone else with my work). He enjoyed painting them for the same reasons that I do: they are the one of the most basic and complete geometric shapes of nature, the circle. Apples are small little objects of perfection. They are all the same as one another, and yet they are all different. There is a world of color to be found within them. They are at once vivid and soft, plain and dramatic. They have character and personality. They are little embodiments of our harvests, our abundance. Simply put, they're beautiful.

Like so many artists who went before him and those who came after, he never knew his own genius and I wish that he had known in his lifetime the talent he possessed and the joy that it still brings to others. It's such a shame that so many brilliant people die broken and in pain thinking they were worth nothing. Cezanne was an amazing artist and I adore both him and his work. Picasso said that Cezanne was his "one and only master, that Cezanne was like the father of us all." I think that says it all.

Consider Poor I

About seven or eight years ago, my husband gave me as a gift a book that was equally both charming and heartbreak-ing at the same time. Called Consider Poor I, it was about the life and works of a woman named Nancy Luce, who lived in the nineteenth century. She lived on Martha's Vineyard and self-published books of her own poetry and stories, mostly about her precious chickens, all hand written and colored and beautifully primitive. In her day she was mocked and abused by those who knew her (and by strangers who thought they knew her), but her work stands today, nearly two hundred years since her birth, as a noble and incredibly heartfelt body of work. And it was because of this beautiful little book, that I decided to make my own chicken book, but with the benefit of modern art tools (and the ever trusty photoshop), rather than just pen and paper. As the years have passed, that one book has morphed into multiple volumes that also include my ducks, and still I continue to make them as my own birds live their lives and pass on.

I've included in my books many of the same elements that Nancy Luce did in hers: photographs of my birds (her tintypes taken at her home must have cost her a small fortune in her day), stories I have written about them, remembrances of special days, anecdotes, and the often-times compulsive habit of "collecting" hen names for future use and listing them throughout each of the books (this can get out of hand as the names begin to number well into the hundreds. Nancy's names were quite odd). And while she would in her writing detail the sorrowful deaths of her beloved birds, I am not so inclined to do go so far as to dwell quite so intently on the morbid, although I do acknowledge the passing of my little friends when it happens.

The books make for a charming little outlet that combines my love of birds with my love of art. It also makes for a nice break (as do my art journals) from the more serious work of painting. Like my journals, the chicken books are an endeavor that is almost childlike in its simplicity. What could be more fun than colored pens, fancy papers and glue sticks? It also touches a place in my heart as I work, a place that makes me think of Nancy Luce and all the other women like her who were so grossly misunderstood in their time, who had they been born far into the future would have been lauded for their originality, for their abilities, and for their enormous heart and soul, rather than be beaten and attacked for their uniqueness in an era when woman were to keep quiet and disappear into the background behind their men and children and never venture into uncharted territory.

Long after I had begun my own modern versions of Nancy Luce's chicken books, I took a trip over to the Vineyard and while there, decided to pay a visit to her grave in one of the local cemeteries. I expected a grave as neglected as her unhappy life and as such I thought I might have to return home unable to locate her final resting place. So you can only imagine how amazed I was to see, from clear across the cemetery a headstone that stood vibrantly out from every other one. Dozens and dozens of plastic and glass chickens artfully arranged and placed there lovingly by countless admirers of her work, fresh flowers, even letters and photographs of people's pet chickens gracing not only the earth around her headstone, but atop the headstone itself. It was a magical and loving shrine to a quiet, lonely woman who poured out her tattered soul in words and pictures.

I like to think she's up there somewhere, looking down and feeling the love that's being poured out to her now, so many, many years after she walked this earth with very little love. And each and every time I sit down to add a page or two to my latest volume, I say a little thank you to Nancy for having inspired me to follow her lead and forever immortalize my own beloved little pets and the person who loves them with all her heart.

Thank you Nancy Luce.