All Up In the Grey Area

The favorite dance of a painter is what happens after someone asks, "What makes a work of art meaningful?" or "What is the meaning of this?"

The dance has developed over the ages, not because the artist lacks the answer but because the answer so often does not satiate most people asking. Here's the pattern: question is asked, response is delivered, querent stares (if they're nice they'll try and help you out), artist stumbles on words because things just got awkward, querent looks skeptical, artist gets freaked out and blurts something vague, unintelligible or just completely unrelated.

That does sound like a "me problem", doesn't it? Well, yes. But once I recognize a pattern like that, I fall right into it.

AND WHAT IS THE ANSWER?

If anyone read this blog, I would no doubt get all kinds of responses to this...but the common zen-savvy answer goes something like:

A painting simply is meaningful if it is more than the sum of it's parts: that the whole somehow transcends the crude bits. 

Another version I've read/heard/experienced is:

The painting looks back at you.  OR The painting has a real palpable presence in a room.

So maybe now you understand why this answer is not acceptable for a lot of people. You now have a whole area of grey…a wide chasm for debate to ensue over which piece in here is meaningful. This is in contrast to the lens through which we usually view images, namely, "Do I like it?" The real reason this, "the painting has a soul" type answer is eye-roll-inducing to most people is:

1. The answer is fluid (changes even within a single viewer)
2. The answer relies on a judgement from the viewer (varies between viewers)
3. The meaning is not reliant on a single particular technique (although the meaning does arise out of the technique used). In other words, there is no hierarchy of technique aside/outside of the painting.
4. It carries the whiff of the metaphysical- and that is a polarizing whiff, believe-you-me. Yes...I suppose it is scary to think we might not know and control everything about our existence.

THE POINT

A lot of strange, new exciting experiences can develop if we fight this impulse to immediately dismiss that which doesn't immediately ring your bell. We might even...grow *gasp*

Certainty, Certainly Not

The past year in the studio has been a lot more straight-ahead than previous years. It's one thing to spend a great deal of time in there- tearing ones hair out, shamanessing all over everyone, questioning oneself to the point of paralysis but it's quite another to go in checking your insecurity at the door.

Ok, it's not that easy. I've just gotten better at maintaining the right mental state. I would compare it to meditation. When your mind wanders back to that arena that you've learned through experience isn't helpful to creation, you just return to quiet center, as one would a mantra. It's also like driving a car, constantly making minute corrections in order to keep moving forward.

None of this has helped me get my work out particularly, but that's another skill set and certainly a New Year's resolution.

There was another change that happened this year. I discovered that I was relying on painting ideas that I hadn't actually done yet as some sort of mental crutch. I would think, "Well, even if this doesn't work out, I have this other thing" without actually making any move to create this 'other thing' and thus not fully committing to what I was working on. When I realized I was doing this, it was a little embarrassing. It's as if I had to fluff myself up to stay positive. Well, there's got to be a way to stay real with yourself without tearing yourself down. There's got to be a middle road.

My solution was to do a couple of these 'other things' promising myself that I would withhold judgment. That no matter what it looked like that I would just stay above it somehow. If I wanted to continue down one of these paths, I just would- I wouldn't analyze it to death. I'm just going to let it happen, having actual faith in that thing I claim to have faith in: intuition.

Keeping it Snappy

As someone who is predisposed to an unhealthy amount of self-analysis, here are some of the things I consider to drive away the fear/anxiety and keep the studio practice spritely:

Joy gives you power.

My variety of painting is like any necessary human expression such as singing or dance.

Fuck it.

It's about play, so how are you getting so down about it?

I know I've made something worth saving before. It will happen again. Have faith.

You are totally freaking free!! This is your chance to make real all or any of those things bouncing through your skull.

Don't be impatient. Let the painting reveal itself to you through the ACT of painting, not just in THINKING about it.

Judgements you make don't need to carry so much positive or negative weight. This is from a part of you concerned with illusory ideas of success/failure. As long as you're thinking of those ideas, you certainly won't make a good painting!

Portal Pusher

In the constant ruminating over my paintings, I keep thinking about hitting the pavement. I think about that peculiar sensation, the sudden awareness of the physical. It's funny, I used to think the more appropriate scenario was the moment during a jump (or fall) just before you start to come back down. No longer! Mind versus asphalt.

What the hell am I talking about?? I'm talking about multiple takes on reality. On the one hand, I am desperate for magic, desperate for a portal, or a sudden change. I know that I occasionally experience something beyond the sum of whatever is unfolding, but I lack the ability to describe it. It's me, floating away on my bicycle. It's my mind before hand touches canvas.

On the other hand, I am hyper-aware of the impossibility for a real examination of this magic. The impossibility of fully and really passing through a portal. I know that it slips away as soon as you turn to see it head-on. I know that I'm a damned fool. It's me, kissing the ground. It's paint hitting paint, swirling, scraping, pushing back.

It's not a dignified battle. It's mud-wrestling. Painting isn't dead, it's the perfect medium for the times. Moving paste around a flat surface, sometimes pretending it's not actually flat. People ask, why can't people write music like Mozart now? Because the world he wrote to/for/about...that's not our reality. Tough nuggets. 

Picasso at the VMFA, notes, thoughts, etc

First of all, I'm not entirely sure Virginia is ready for 1910 based on the conversations I overheard. For example: "Well, TO ME, that just doesn't look like it should be in a museum". To me, that just shows that you're completely unaware of what it is an artist is trying to do. Drawing is thinking through the hand. Picasso's drawings are of interest because you can see that thought process in a stripped down form. Also, *BACKHAND*.

This is not to say I don't have questions, concerns, preoccupations with the show also. Unfortunately, I can't seem to separate my personal studio preoccupations with what I'm seeing at the museum. So let me get that out of the way and come back around to the show....

It's a problem of purity, a problem of everything's permitted so therefore nothing seems to matter in particular. This feeling is not limited to the studio. Within the studio, this is translating into a problem differentiating art from fashion. The general distinction is simple and well-understood: art carries meaning where fashion carries superficial contemporary aesthetics. But the specific is tricky, as always.

I'm craving a method, a recipe. I'm tired of what feels like random achievement. At the same time I am wary of abstraction with a system behind it. I'm also feeling very seduced by contemporary fashion. It just happens to reflect back my own sensibilities. In 5 years I'll be out of fashion, it's just coincidence, the wheel turning. Unfortunately, my own yearning for meaning manifests as an urge to mythologize. It's very hard for me not to jump straight from that urge into primitivism and symbolism. I keep hovering around the native american and Ife exhibits at the museum like some kind of nerdy ghost. Of course, this sort of thing happens to be in fashion right now. Are you feeling my frustration yet?? It does seem important not to be reactionary also.

Part 2 after work...where I will bring this all around to Picasso, I swear.

Disciplinarian

So awkward trials gave way to a return to order, or a return to the need to organize thoughts, palettes, methods and the studio. I feel good about this- or I should say, I feel that intuitive pinch that tells me that this is correct. I think there can be this push to throw the baby out with the bath water in studio practice, when things aren't adding up, to keep asking 'why, why, why??' and continually redefining oneself unnecessarily.

Perhaps we do this in an attempt to hide our weaknesses from ourselves or in an effort to get somewhere quickly. Usually it drives us into increasingly tighter circles.

In either case, I'm glad to mix a wonderfully traditional palette with a full range, rediscovering some subtle colors that I appreciate in nature but haven't mixed specifically in a long time. Mmmm...purple. Yellow. And everything in between....