No big deal!

I like painting. I like the place painting takes me. I like looking at painting. I even like thinking about painting and talking about it.

I like the freedom that comes with it. I like the freedom I find in getting there and being there. And, I like painting in general, not just my painting. It is a chicken and egg thing; because it happened when I was so young, I don't know which came first, liking painting or liking paintings!

But I find freedom in painting, doing it, looking at it, loving it. The world of color and mark and imagination and light and seeing and feeling and vibrancy and intensity. Seeing. Feeling. Dreaming. Flying. Freedom.

Not many people see it this way, of course. The world is dog eat dog. The world has agendas. It makes it turn, apparently. I can live with that. Especially because I have painting.

The art world means business, which is why it has nothing to do with art, or painting. There is no getting around this, no having your cake and eating it. Make no mistake; let there be no confusion about this. The art world means business.

I was sort of shocked yesterday when I checked out a show on line. Held and Pearlstein. There were all these pronouncements and proclamations. Manifestos that made long lists of nos. Entirely about what it wasn't about as though there was such a thing.

I was once interested in the Brights, an athiest organization. The problem was, they focused on what they weren't instead of what they were, and that did not interest me.

It was as though Pearlstein and Held felt like they needed to make all these rules about why they weren't in order to be legitimate and important and powerful. Of course I think it is just the work of critics and dealers. Like me, they just liked to paint.

But if I have to prove something to be a painter, forget it. Not going to happen. Who cares? I would rather be free, which is why most painters just take their paints and go somewhere. Anywhere. Anywhere they can be free. Anywere they can paint.

Otherwise you just get a lot of people with agendas, with opinions, with rules and restrictions and punishments. If you want permission to be free, to paint, you have to give it to yourself, and keep giving it to yourself, and if you do that, if you give it to yourself, then no one can take it from you, can they? And how cool is that?


-- Post From My iPhone