Surrendering to the Sublime; Part One

Joan Snyder; Seed Catchers, 2007, Oil, acrylic,
berries, paper mache, burlap on canvas, 36 x 48"

There is this place. It is as light or as dark as you make it. Call it the glass filled half way. Always filled half way. That is the point. Call it half full, half empty. Your choice. You can look for the light until you're blue in the face. You can measure forever to see if the glass is half full or half empty. Won't make any difference. I heard this Rabbi tell a story on television to illustrate a point: when a boy called up to God and asked why God wasn't taking care of all the terrible things in the world, God said that he had, he said: "I sent you." There is this place. Welcome to the inner life.

This is a rich place. This interior space; it is at once the spiritual, emotional, intellectual/mental, intuitive, psychological domain of the self and of all selves; the shared self. The soul. Everyone has one. It is the place that the outer world speaks to, if we let it, if we listen. We probably aren't listening enough. This is the place that among so many things, art speaks to.  Some artists look to and at this place, and what they do in response is what their art becomes. Some artists live in this place. Some artists seek it.  Joan Snyder seems to go back and forth. 

I've admired her paintings for about twenty years now, and sometimes the relationship, my relationship to her work, takes different turns. I felt the same way about the work of her friend, Porfirio DiDonna. This is to be expected. I feel it in myself, in my own work. I see the journey. I see the ups and downs. The inner life(inner light) is not the same as the sublime. All inner life is not sublime and all that is sublime is not inner life. Where they intersect, however, they are one. Where they intersect, they are inner LIGHT!

I'm just not sure that the inner life is something you seek. I could be wrong.  If you do you become a seeker, it is like the premise of the law of attraction; you just get a lot of seeking. I believe that the inner life, the sublime, is something that is always there. We don't need to seek it, or talk about seeking it; we just need to stop fighting, to stop being afraid, to just be, to just surrender. When people say that they are looking for "peace," we understand what this means; that there is no peace. 

These new paintings by Joan Snyder strike me, literally, as mostly about seeking and less about the other thing. But the show at the Nielsen Gallery in Boston is entitled "and seeking the sublime." It gives me no pleasure to say this, quite the contrary.  There is no way in my mind, however, that anyone could lie about this. Ignore this. It is so painfully obvious. The paintings rub our noses in something else; and that stuff we smell is her pain. Welcome to Joan Snyder's garden, an essentially dark and savage beauty filled with anger and sadness. Suffice it to say that these are not her "pretty(a term Resnick threw at me to dismiss his paintings from the Fifties--clearly he didn't think the inner life was a pretty place, and he killed himself to prove it)" paintings. But maybe she didn't name the show. Maybe she let the gallery or whoever wrote the catalog make their pitch.

Ordinarily I would refuse to say anything. Whatever Snyder's struggles are, they are hers, and she is entitled to them. Bless her for them. That is understood. I would never argue with her paintings, or her pain. She has my complete sympathy and understanding. 

What I can argue about is this bit of spin. Seeking the sublime. Reminds me of the idea of trying. If someone says: I tried to save so and so. What that tells us is that they didn't save so and so. That they failed. And that is what they should have said. Don't try to score points by talking about trying. In the words of the moment: don't put "lipstick on a pig."

Seeking the sublime. How about "struggling" with the sublime. What this tells us is that she hasn't found it, and we won't either when we turn to her new paintings. What we will find instead is gaping wounds. Lots of them. The show would have been more aptly titled Gaping Wounds(My Stigmata by I. M. Bleiding?). Then we would know what we were in for. We could decide if we were up for that. We could decide not to go. We wouldn't be tricked into thinking that we would be in for THE SUBLIME. I have to add that I am now one of those recovering Catholics who finds the image of the Crucifix macabre, so that could be where we part ways. Sorry. More drawn to the Mother Mary. I think Bernini had it right with St Theresa.

I don't need to go to see Joan Snyder's work to find the sublime. I have some works of hers in my home, and I find them plenty sublime enough for me. I own my own responsibility anyway where the sublime is concerned. So I will look at these paintings in greater depth. I will feel their pain, the depth of their pain, and her pain. I will let them be. I will surrender to them. If going through the pain... ok, ok... so be it. That is the inner life. And that just might actually be sublime.

Experience Versus Theoretical Knowledge

A few months ago someone who worked for the Obama campaign pointed out in answer to a query on foreign policy that the candidate had taken a course on the very subject in college. The interviewer laughed, and rightly so. The interviewee was offended. Life is strange.

I laughed too, of course, because my immediate thought was that maybe the person who taught the class might be more qualified to run for office. Then of course the little voice in my head said: those who can't do, teach, and then I was back where I started.

Experience does matter. I come from that school. The Jimi Hendrix are-you-experienced school. Experience is everything!

But wait, there's more. Apparently dyslexia is a "condition" that separates those who are more comfortable with hands-on(read: true life experience) with those who prefer the theoretical(read: fantasy). And the theoreticians want to call the shots!

After reading about dyslexia it turns out I'm their poster child, and, apparently so is George Bush. What is comforting, and not surprising, is that dyslexia experts and specialists disagree, violently. Gee, didn't see that coming.

Not entirely unrelated is the whole concept of reading. My wife is a very fast reader. I'm not. She was instructed in reading. I was not. They told her that speed was everything. They told her to just keep reading even when she didn't understand what she read. She was taught to read down the center of the page, every fourth word, that kind of stuff. Who are these people? If I don't understand something I don't move on until I get it. I will read something over and over until it sinks in. I don't care if it is poetry, philosophy, or instructions for operating a band saw. I read for content, comprehension, and results! I've always been fascinated by how my wife has nothing to say about the four hundred page novel she just ripped through. If I only read the first page of a book I can tell you about it. But apparently I'm dyslexic.

I love how everything is a condition. Apparently we're not just different. Apparently there is an ideal, a perfect model, and the rest of us are deviants. Sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it? Hitler! I always love it when you find out that these perfect models were the real deviants: males judges wearing women's underwear under their fancy robes. It was like the dysfunctional craze; turned out we were all dysfunctional.

Apparently art is the big tent for everyone that doesn't fit it. Welcome on board! Crazy isn't it(we're going crazy; want to come along)? John Lennon sang about it. Herbert Read wrote about it. Carl Jung even made it seem normal. Then again, it's all a Catch 22, no? Hobson's Choice, or Morton's Fork. We're either psychotic or normal-neurotic. One kind of dilemma or another. Take your pick.

So who do you want? Who do you want to be? Do you want to have taken a course in flying a plane, or have actually flown a plane? Do you want the pilot to be someone who took a course or someone who has actually flown? Choose wisely. Do you want to learn about love and sex from someone who read a book, or someone who actually has been in love and had sex. Do you want to learn about sex from nuns?

I talked to an artist not long ago who was doing an exhibition about the war in Iraq.I can't remember his name. Harvard and Yale ties I think, which should apparently be enough. I said, oh, wow, have you been over there? He said no. He didn't think that that was important. I wondered aloud what he possible had to offer on the subject. Needless to say I was not convinced. Sex from nuns. Who are these people?

PS I was inspired to write this in the heat of the primaries. Now I'm inspired to add something. Do I support Obama? Whole heartedly! 

So what changed? McCain is a pilot after all. He has some experience flying a plane(and being shot down!). What about Obama? Well, Obama is my vote. Just one vote. We all get one. You have yours. I believe that there are other questions where the pilot is concerned, and I have been forced to consider these. 

For starters, where is this pilot taking this plane? Not a bad question. How will he get us there? What kind of judgments will he make? How will he handle the inevitable surprises and challenges? Etc. Obama is exceptional, and I believe this. That makes him the exception that proves the rule. I don't think we can afford to ignore this. To not consider the exception is to ignore the opportunities that are put before us. To not consider the exception is to turn our backs on hope!

So in the end it isn't even who's flying the plane, but where it's going!  The experience thing is very reasonable, and I believe that; but sometimes we have to go beyond that. We have to go with a gut feeling. My gut feelings have served me very well, so I trust them. My gut tells me Obama will fly our plane where we need to go, have to go, but also to someplace new and positive-- someplace that will restore the potential that is ALL our lives! 

The Kiss

Life kisses us. It just happens. Think about it. Ok, maybe it also kicks us in the pants or teeth. But more importantly, no matter what, no matter what a jerk we are, life kisses us. Life kisses us, and to paraphrase Lauren Bacall, it's even better if we kiss back.

Kiss back. Not much going around since the perfect storm of this white house and the twin towers. People aren't kissing back, they are kicking back, but it is time for a change. Am I guilty of kicking back? Absolutely! I like the three strikes rule, but that's not turning the other cheek. I can't say it was ever easy even embracing the idea of turning the other cheek, but to actually do it? I get it now. Turning the other cheek is less an invitation as a preemptive forgiving.

Yes is the price of admission. An artist is just someone with a yes for making magic alchemically. And it isn't about the magic object but the magic experience, and we accept the object as a vessel for that. ALL the artist has to do is say yes and then, even harder, keep saying it. It doesn't matter what anyone else says. We know that, but it's still hard, like turning the other cheek.

Making art is kissing back. Not kicking back. Sometimes we are confused. Kiss back. Kiss back even when it feels like life isn't kissing. Just kiss for kiss sake!

John Walker Painting Survey at Nielsen in Boston

Charred, ashes, a swath of detritus spread across miles and miles of a scorched earth, flotsam and jetsam littering a muddy shore, left behind by the tide or a storm, it doesn’t matter. The elephant in the room, the desperate inner child, the man on fire; these all come to mind standing in the glow or wake or shadow of John Walker’s always epic and often towering paintings. On the other hand we get the kind of chalky radiance of frescoed starlight, the closest thing to Giotto these eyes have seen in this world, in this place, in this muddy messed up twenty-first century where less and less is what it seems, where real, the real, is anathema and truth is a joke, scoffed at, ridiculed, kicked in the gutter. And for what?

That’s probably what John Walker would like to know. Can anyone tell him? Instead he’s getting hammered, a hammer the size of a wrecking ball, driving him into the ground, driving a shaft the size of a tree trunk down his throat, telling him that lies are truth and shit is fresh cream.

These many years, these many paintings, tell this story. The call of starlight; the promise of starlight. The shit/mud/magma/primordial ooze that we stand in as we look to the stars. The shit/mud/magma/primordial ooze of a species that cares only about outward things, about power and pretense and position and posturing and primacy and prestige. That pees on everything. He is holding up a mirror. He is holding up a lamp. A lighthouse on the distant shore. Yes, it is shit. Embrace the shit if it brings you closer to the earth. Lie down in it. Lie down in darkness. But look to the heavens. Look to our better selves. Look for salvation and light.

John Walker carries his paintings in his paintings along with everything else in his life. They are of course part of his story, part of his personal mythology, so why wouldn’t they be there. Bits of shapes, words, figures of sorts that reference the things that matter to him, scars from loss and from experience, like falling from a tree or being scorned by a loved one or being bitten by a snake; and wrinkles on our face, smiles or frowns, that we get from what life washes onto our shores or rains down on us. These are all there in the paintings; relics, touchstones, stains, souvenirs, heirlooms, mementos. All the things that shape his life.

There are also his beliefs, his dreams, his hopes, his heartbreaks. It is a kind of world according to John Walker. Not much different from what we get from every artist, really, but today we’re talking about him. Because he has been there, been around, from Birmingham to Melbourne and back again. Because he has been painting and hanging it out there and leaving his mark and defying the odds and getting up and getting knocked down and getting back up again and painting and painting and painting. And it is all in the paint; trapped in its amber, laid out on its mud flats, singing its song, for all who will listen whether we're listening or not!

The first time I saw one of his paintings was almost thirty years ago. Circa 1979. A painter friend of mine and I were looking through a gallery window. A closed gallery somewhere in downtown New York. This is what I remember. We were awed by his painting. We knew his work and he was already legend. The painting was one of the monument shape series. The sort of erect phallic obelisk in the landscape that looks like something broken, at once organic and geometric. It was a figure/ground of sorts. Figure in a landscape. He wasn’t the only person doing this at that time. Other painters come to mind. But it was almost like a sculptor’s painting. Strong, powerful, solid. And yet it was also abstract. Fiercely abstract. Fiercely ephemeral. Real bravado paint; juicy, sensuous, wet, flying. Constable/Turner meets Brancusi/Stonehenge. Again, landscape and figure--horizontal and vertical. Don Quixote's windmills (the later paintings invert the shape, now female, of rebirth and resurrection, pushing down instead of up, below the high horizon--Ahab's white whale, or the pass at Thermopylae).

Over the years he has found new reasons to paint, new memories, new shapes, new dreams, new landscapes, and his legend has grown as the mythology inside the work has grown. His oeuvre has always been intense. And intensely abstract in the way that we come to them. They just act abstract. Maybe skulls, lambs, words, horizons, but abstract. They are landscape but they are flat. They have light and depth but they seem to be much more about surface and texture. They are thick and heavy and dark even brooding but they shine. These are not qualities unique to the world of painting. These are not paradoxes unique to the world of painting. Spanish painting comes to mind. Goya, El Greco, Velasquez, even Picasso. They were not afraid of darkness and they used it to make light. So does Walker. If as Richard Tuttle once reminded me, black speaks about white, and despair speaks about hope, etc, and viceversa, then this is the ground we stand on with Walker. His sprawling scatological crusts of dark paint frame the light, his little crumbs of rainbow lead us down a crevasse.

Is there rage in these paintings? It causes tectonic shifts beneath their surface, and strikes out of nowhere like a mid-western tornado. Is there longing, and poetry, and a gentle hand? Surely. Like God or Shakespeare, Walker feels all things, and gives all things. Love is like the dew, it settles on the horse turd and the rose alike--Larry McMurtry once wrote something to that effect. In John Walker’s paintings the love also falls on both. We stand before his “frescoes,” his Giottos, we look up at them, like we watch Rembrandt’s side of beef, or Lear or Macbeth splayed before us on the stage:Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

We are happy to witness this in the paintings. It is his plight, and in the end it is our plight. Life is a dubious experiment, as Jung said. Can we find peace with this? Should we find peace with this? Or should we be trying to talk to the manager, or whoever’s in charge? After all, what the hell is going on? Right? I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore! Help us, Dante, help us Tom Cruise. What is this Divine Comedy? What is this existential joke/nightmare? John Walker serves up a slab of paint. It is as cathartic as Aeschylus and as searing as the deep blue sea. It rocks us. We walk away changed, and no matter whether he or anyone else knows it, we remember. Thank you, John Walker, and rock on!

The Calling

My most recent entry mused about that call an artist hears and has to answer; why this of course becomes the artist's calling.  When I was a boy living in Rome, walking home down Via Margutta, I would turn into #48 and all was right with the world. It was the most beautiful and enchanting sight. I know people experience this, they turn into their driveway, come around a bend in the river, fly over a piece of mountain, and their heart lifts because they are home. This was my favorite home growing up. It wasn't about feeling safe or being back in my own space. Via Margutta was beautiful, and as a ten year old I felt it intensely. It is more responsible for me being an artist than almost anything else, and it is especially responsible for the artist and person I am.

I've joked about how Richard Tuttle gave me grief as a young man for my blind devotion to beauty, about how else could he have thought otherwise considering he grew up in New Jersey. Not fair, of course, because beauty is everywhere, but there is something about certain kinds of beauty that day in and day out cause you to wonder, to be enchanted. Some people are not easily enchanted, and they are proud of this, who knows why. They like to say that they are not easily impressed and they take comfort in some sort of sense of superiority that this gives them; they are picky. You have to feel for the picky ones, perhaps a question of imagination, or the law of attraction.

#48 was a simple doorway compared to #51 where they shot Roman Holiday ten years before, (one scene right under our window as a matter of fact); but everyone agreed #48 was a vision when you looked inside. Stone steps led up a long stairway framed by dusty carmen pink walls, plants, flowers, and vines and sculpture to an archway which supported the stairs to our apartment on the top floor. Through the archway one could see the tops of the pines of the Pincio, and the sky. It was as magical as a dream. Our apartment had three floors and a terrace on the roof that looked out over every hill and dome of the golden city, the top of the Spanish Steps to one side, the twin cupolas of the Piazza del Popolo on the other, etc., etc., etc.

That doorway is always with me. It is part of what art is to me, and what calls me. Of course anytime we talk about art, it is always from where we are standing, like looking at a building or a flower, we can describe what we see from that perspective at that moment. The rest is from memory. Memories of doorways.

One of the strangest questions I am sometimes asked is how long does it take to make a painting. As long as it takes, of course. We're not talking about boiling an egg after all. But the questions persist. How do you know when a painting is finished? Now that is an interesting question, because of course even the artist wants to know that one. The answer might be the same as for the first: that it depends.

It depends on what the artist is up to. You could say that a painting is finished when it purrs. Like a car when you start its engine. When a painting is somehow complete it will purr and you will hear it purr, that's how you'll know. But that is not enough for some artists. Purring is just the beginning for them. 

As a parent you bring a child into this world and at first you are thrilled that they are alive and well. It's huge, but it is just the beginning of course. Soon you have help them to eat and stand and walk and swim and catch a ball and read and so on and so on. Maybe it ends, maybe it doesn't. But when you've achieved one of these milestones at a child's side, because surely you share in their triumph, you think for a split second, well, I've done my job, there...but it passes quickly and you are on to the next challenge so fast you can barely catch your breath. It keeps you going, it keeps you climbing to the next level. 

Painting is the same. Maybe a painting seems finished because you have brought it to life. Maybe you want that painting to just be happy. Maybe you want that painting to go far. Maybe you want that painting to make you proud. These differences will factor into how long a painting takes and when it is done. Parents are different and so are painters. Some are cats and let their babies fend for themselves; other breeds never let their offspring leave home.

Where I fit in between these two is a concern. Recently an art dealer who wants to help me, and I've definitely alienated a few of them along this line, suggested I let her rent my paintings to companies that need something on their walls. She chided me for mourning a painting I had just sold. She asked me if I was nuts. They are not your children, she said. Here was my reply:

I'm sorry this is so hard for you to get about me. Imagine if you were a painter, and everyday that you painted you were surrounded by the family you loved, that each painting was painted in their presence, and was fed by your life with them, well, that would be me. I am not a greenhouse painter. I am not a corporate painter. I don't go to a studio, like an office, and punch the clock. I paint where I live and I live where I paint. If this is nuts, then I am nutty. I can't imagine doing it any other way if I can help it, and I feel very fortunate to be able to do this. Maybe a dozen years from now when they are all grown up and I am not so fortunate, maybe I'll be there, but I don't think so. There is nothing in this other thing; this painting like a businessman. I grew up in Europe and was influenced by a non-commercial art world. I remember how my European friends used to complain to me when I lived in New York. How commercial the art world was. I ignored both. 

My paintings mean something to me,J. I wouldn't do them if they didn't. I'm not knocking them out, especially these days. Each one is a place on a journey I try to make count every second. I put learning very high on my list. Learning and growing. Each painting is as much about where I'm going as where I am, and where I've been, but MOST of all, they are about where I am at that very second, which is why they are always changing. If they don't change, then I need to be afraid. It means I'm not learning or growing. It means I'm not alive. It means I'm not paying attention, to the world or myself. Maybe this will help. I spend a lot more time with each painting these days because I can. Not so much about time spent working, as time spent paying attention. I'm really happy about that.

No word. I've never made any secret of the fact that I'm sentimental. A good thing in my mind despite how it plays out in the world. I'm sentimental up front and no one has to like that.  It is who I am, as a person and a painter. Doesn't make for good corporate art, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm still in that stairway in Rome, and my paintings are finished when they take me to the top.

Making Something of Something

I was talking to my friend, Ulick Mahoney, at his extensive exhibition of paintings at UMASS Boston's Harbor Gallery yesterday, and one of the things he said to me was that he only felt good when he was working/painting. He may not have said it exactly like that, but that is what he in effect said. I understood.

Artists need to do what they do, to paint, or write, or compose music; to realize something about themselves and the world in some external way. People who aren't artists don't need to do this. They're fine. Artists do what they do because they have to. If they don't, they don't feel like themselves.

I was just explaining this to someone who wanted to be an artist but never got around to it. Artists, real artists, don't work that way. They can't help it. Calling them driven is wide of the mark. They have to make something to feel ok, to fill some need in themselves, to fill a hole, and it isn't about just accomplishing something either. It is about making something that connects them, grounds them, COMPLETES them. Artists are artists to complete themselves. Other people feel relatively complete already.

Which brings up another way of looking at it. Artists DO NOT understand how other people can't, don't, won't make art. They don't understand how other people can function, be happy, feel complete without making art. Artists would go crazy if they couldn't make art. Should I say crazy-er? This is what makes artists seem so arrogant to other people. It makes them seem like they know something other people don't know. It makes them act like other people have missed the boat. 

Again, they can't help it. It our world of therapy, yes, we probably wouldn't have such a thing as art if everyone was NORMAL. Like Woody Allen once explained in a joke at the end of I think Annie Hall: this guy would commit his brother who thought he was a chicken but, he explained, he needed the eggs.

Ulick's show was pretty amazing. A primordial sea of color and paint and marks and shapes. A tribute to how he has completed himself through his work. He confessed that he spends every nickel he has on canvas and paint, that he scours the art stores for deals, that he is convinced he has somehow saved money when he buys a lot of supplies on sale.

Sitting there in the gallery surrounded by his paintings he is awash in their glow; he is himself. Not as much himself as he would be if he were in his studio painting, but not bad; he gets a kind of closure, a sense of summation, a chance to take it all in and see how it adds up and maybe where it might be going. 

Ulick paints with a fierce fusion of mark and marklessness. Collectively they take off, get lift off, they become almost something like a trip to a planetarium. The installation reinforces this experience of the work. Together they do more of what they already do individually. I would have to say that they indeed "add up."

So what is it about making something, making art, that completes the artist? It is more than connecting the dots, connecting with the world. One could do that in one's mind. No need to make it physical, no need to realize those connections in a concrete way.

So what is it about the physical nature of making something that to an artist is like adding an arm or a leg that everyone else already has? This completion is about something more like the way a dog marks where he has been. That was what what so interesting about graffiti art; it did that in such a direct way: Kilroy was here. Like planting a flag on the moon.

When you look at Ulick's paintings you get a sense of that. He is not just going into space, he is working it, like the sculptor he once was, and then he is leaving a record of having been there, having experienced it, but he is also leaving a record that he WAS there. That makes him feel good, feel ok with himself. He needs that for himself. Other people don't. Other people might need other things. This is what gives the artist a sense of power, of meaning, of property, even. Of security even. They have made something. It makes them feel real, worthwhile, maybe even lasting. These are their children. This is their line. It will keep them alive. It will make sense of what they were. It will prove that they were here.

Exceptional

My last post warned against the temptation to believe either yourself or others that you deserve recognition. I recommended against ever going there. Pit of despair. A hole you'll never get out of so you will just keep digging deeper and deeper and deeper. It is a question of grace. Humility. Shame, even. But the message I sent was loud and clear if you want to live a healthy, happy, productive life as an artist: don't you dare!

Its twisted twin of temptation is just as dangerous: ever believing that you are exceptional. If you or anyone else either whispers it in your ear or shouts it from the rooftops, don't believe it. It is a trap. This hole will be just as hard to get out of and take years of penance. Exceptional is the secret secret of the spoiled brat, the selfish jerk, the crazed egomaniac. Special rules.

In earlier posts I've invited everyone to think of themselves as special, in that way that all life is special, in that way that all life is a miracle; and I believe that. I believe that everyone has the gift of life; the gift of a mind of one's own; the gift of a free spirit. THIS IS NOT THE SAME! This does not make you better than anyone else!

How can I explain this to the satisfaction of both sides of this argument: to the ones who believe that no one is special and that to think otherwise invites only chaos; and to the ones who accept this as an invitation to be spoiled, selfish, and arrogant.

The first group discourages all things in others. To discourage is to cut the legs out from under. It is to invite failure and foster cowardice and fear.

The second group encourages the wrong sort of behavior. It's my-party-I'll-cry-if-I-want-to behavior. It is a poor substitute for true encouragement, which inspires others to be brave, to do the right thing, to lift themselves and other up, to reach for the best in themselves and each other. That is what encourage means.

Embrace that you have been given a special gift as an artist, but never believe that this makes you exceptional. Again, it doesn't make you better than anyone else. The gift is for giving. It is inner, and personal; and the other thing, the aberration, is the worst in us, some sort of license to run roughshod over the world.

Some might say that this is all really a question of balance; balancing the rights of the individual against the rights of the group and vice-versa. Perhaps this is so. Knowing where to draw the line. I think it is more appropriate to call on the idea of the heart, which has always been synonymous with both courage and goodness. I think that is where we find the answers.

In our hearts we know what is right, and in our hearts we know that life is special, and that it demands that we are brave. This covers both the individual and the group. Choose that. Exceptional is indeed the province of all things ego. And so I caution: don't go there.

* * * * *

Nonetheless it might be worth adding that in the rare, rare instance of the truly exceptional, if and when it exists, one would more than likely find nothing less than complete grace and humility, and not even the smallest whisper of...

Surviving The Fall

I'm not sure anyone else experiences the fall from grace the way art students do after they leave school, and although everyone graduating feels the wound; the future art-makers get it with more salt. This may explain why so few graduates go on to actually become artists.

What am I talking about? The gold star, the support/reward system, the pat on the back, feedback, the people who are paid to care. When you're in school there is a giant support system in place for you whether you know it or not. At the very least they know you're alive, and that is not the case when you leave.

After you graduate no one knows you're alive, and the fall is so sharp, so far, so dramatic that few people can take it. Because you're making something visible, the proof of this is all the more painful. You're hanging it out there. You're making something that can be seen, can be touched, can be responded to, and when no one sees or touches or responds to your work the results can be devastating.

When your work goes ignored, when no one engages your efforts, you will question why you're doing what you're doing, whether it is worth it, whether you should quit(or worse, whether you should go back to school so you can get it all back).

If you're just out of law school and you hang up a shingle, it will take years to establish your practice. That's why you will probably join a firm instead. Twenty years later maybe you're a partner. An artist is on his or her own. The chances of joining a gallery out of school are slim, and an entirely different matter. Few galleries recruit. Fewer artists are ready. It takes an artist years to shake their influences and develop a mature style. Other support systems are almost non-existent. Parents and families are going to be concerned. Do you have a job? Are you selling anything? What about commercial work? The pressures are going to be relentless. Every letter, every phone call, every visit home is going to be piling it on.

What do you do as a young person who really wants to be an artist but is really feeling the pain and the pressure?

First off, don't take it personally. You haven't done anything wrong. This happens to everyone. Everyone. They just might be hiding it better than you.

Next, this is going to be really hard, but you can do it. Know that it is hard. No one cares whether you're an artist or not. No one is supposed to care. You're supposed to care. You're not going to get a medal for doing something really hard. No parade. In fact, no one is going to like you for living your dream. You think someone who chose to work nine to five instead of writing novels or making sculpture is going to like you for doing it. You think they're going to be cheering you on? They are going to think you're a bum, or, you're going to make them feel bad and look bad for not following their dream, if they had one. So get used to it. You're going to get some abuse. You're going to be blocked, denied, knocked down, resented and begrudged. It just makes sense. This is what you're up against.

Also, for what it's worth, learn to carry an umbrella when it looks like rain. Your parents and family are naturally going to be concerned and they are going to put pressure on you to be self-sufficient and secure, in part so that you won't be at risk and in part so you won't be a financial burden to them. Be smart about it. Help them to feel at ease about your choice. If you're happy, they'll be happy. Let them know you're ok with the challenges you face. Let them know it's worth it to you, that this is what you want. Show them you can survive.

Next, all you need is one friend who can give you feedback. Braque and Picasso had each other. You'll have to make it a two-way street. Give as good as you get, or better.

Be VERY patient about getting recognition. DO NOT give into the ancient temptation about deserving recognition. It will only make you bitter. It is a bad mistake and a bottomless pit of despair. If you're in it for recognition then choose a different profession, fast. Do this thing you love for its own reward.

Then the obvious is two words: low overhead. Don't spend money you don't have. Work inexpensively. Find cheap space, and live where you work. Put your creativity and imagination to work for you. I know a painter who made her own furniture, and then ended up being an artist who makes furniture. Don't want what others have. Make it yourself. Make it happen yourself!

You can survive the fall.

No Fear of Painting

I'll get right to it. Painting is like flying. It is fun. It is free. You can see! You can see better. Or, it's like swimming, which if you're holding onto the edge of the pool, or standing in the shallow end, means you're not-- swimming. If you're swimming in lanes, well then, you're up to something else as far as I'm concerned. People want to make painting like swimming in lanes. They want to put a stop watch on it, they want to bump you out of their lane, make you get out of their way, decide if you even deserve to be there, if you're any good.

You can't hate haters, and you can't judge judgers, or you're just like them. So ignore the people swimming in lanes, and if they want to call that swimming, well then, more beer for you. Mark Spitz, arguably one of the great swimmers, once said swimming was just being comfortable in the water. If you do feel comfortable in the water, if you're happy in the water or happy flying, then this whole obsession with being any good, being judged, is not only beside the point, it is a waste of precious time, time for swimming, or flying, or painting. It is not only not positive, it is negative, like a four point turn around in basketball. Something is lost. How do I know this? I ended up in the lane swimming world of painting many years ago, and I was a critic too! I was young. Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa. I live in another country now.

OK. I've said this before: people say someone has a mind of their own as though this is a bad thing, as though it was not only not ideal--the way it is supposed to be, but also definitely a problem. We can go into why it frustrates people if you have a mind of your own, why it is threatening and so forth, but I'm going somewhere else. People say someone is a free spirit in the same sort of strange way, as though it's flaky or not for everyone. How strange and how sad that we are born into bondage and ushered into more by the very people who should be setting us free and protecting that freedom. I guess its more beer for them.

Have a mind of your own, first and foremost, and be a free spirit. What else should you do and be? Treasure your life; like the baseball manager that said treat every out like gold. Treat your life like the most valuable gift you possess, because it is. It all starts there.

If you want to be an artist, then be the best artist you can, but also be the worst, because if anything worth doing is worth doing well, it is also worth doing badly. Be the worst artist in the world if that means you can do the thing you love. I have been steered in different directions in my life by people who supposedly had my best interests at heart, but it wasn't true; they just wanted me to do what they did, or what they needed from me for themselves. They tried to pimp me as far as I am concerned.

I paint because I like to. Like flying high in the sky, or playing in the mud, or swimming in the open water. What could I care if I am a bad painter, if such a thing could be true, if doing the thing you love could ever be bad; and furthermore, what do I care what some critic thinks? I don't paint for them. I don't ask them to pay to see my work. If they want to stop and drink, well, I hope they enjoy it because I want them to be happy. Otherwise I just paint for free, and maybe for the ones I love and that love me. The others, the lane swimmers; I feel no opposition, and hope the same for them. If opposition is in their hearts, if they feel compelled to argue or judge instead swim, well, I will wish the best for them. I give no quarter and expect none in that regard. We are all free.

Culpa Minor

You have to be willing to be bad. You have to be willing to fail. No one tells you this.

As an artist you have know this. You are going to make awful things. You are going to make mistakes. Never mind that this is in large part how we really learn. Hard knocks. We learn by screwing up.

So here is the kicker: if we can't admit to our mistakes, if we can't admit when we've been bad...what? We don't learn!

Doing something bad or making mistakes is impossible to contemplate for so many of us, especially those of us who have high expectations of ourselves or thrust upon us. This is what accounts for what are called underachievers and overachievers. High and low expectations.

Admitting to mistakes or failure is so impossible for some people that they resort to denial, lies, blaming, cover-ups, misdirection, and anything else that will get them off the hook. They are PARALYZED by the very idea of mistakes or failure. They even become hostile.

Admitting to mistakes and failure not only allows us to learn, make amends, and move on; it allows us to take risks. Risks become impossible if mistakes or failure are forbidden. Learning from our mistakes not only helps us grow, so does taking risks. Admitting to mistakes and failure takes courage; not doing so is giving into fear.

As an artist one learns very quickly to treat failure and mistakes as friends. So often you hear of the "happy accident." Artists make a special effort to incorporate what would otherwise be considered a mistake or failure and learn from it. It enlarges their experience, and it makes them brave. It explains why so many of us give up on our dream to become an artist. We can't tolerate the shame of so much disappointment. It also might explain why so many of those who do go on to be artists aren't afraid of a lifetime of failure. It is more than art being its own reward; it is more than learning to get back up after getting knocked down on a regular basis; it is the profound knowledge that we are always learning and that we and our work will be better for it, and that that is what is most important.