foul mood

I am in a foul mood for one reason or another, so I thought I would rant a bit about my subject of choice.
The New York Times had an article in the Arts section today about a four year old whose paintings are being compared to Jackson Pollock’s. Well, duh. That is not a hard one figure out. They are quite similar. I have seen his paintings as well as the kid’s. Nearly identical. Now, I am all for creativity and people calling whatever they want to call art art and I understand the movement of the time. I think it should be left to the creator of the work. A friend sent over a story about some dude’s installation in some fancy museum being mistaken by the janitor for trash, so the janitor threw it out. If its art to the artist and the fancy museum curator, fine. The thing that really annoys me is that all of this work, the little kid’s paintings, Pollock’s work and the ‘trash’ installation all sell for ridiculous amounts of money. Artists like to crawl up their own behinds and take themselves really seriously and make all kinds of deep statements that they feel should be worth somebody’s yearly salary to own. Folks in the art industry promote this. I don’t like artists myself. They are flaky…and weird. To assume that your painting or whatever your craft is really worth so much money is arrogant. People buy it because people will buy anything especially if there is enough hype and they think they are the only ones to have it. Its an investment. It has little to do with art. And the perpetuation of that practice has been virtually the death of art… or at least the institutionalization of it. It becomes inaccessible and gives the illusion that you have some rare talent or insight into some mystery and thus should be highly paid for it.. Obviously not true from looking at the kid’s art and Pollock’s art. Its the same. Shoot, I could do it….

pony ride

My sister and I jokingly refer to my rare opportunities to ride horses as my ‘pony ride’. She is an accomplished rider and riding instructor and is tolerant of me in the ring riding around while she teaches. I have loved horses all my life. Horses sent me on the quest to become an artist. As a kid I would copy pictures of horses onto loose leaf paper with a number 2 pencil. I had a binder full of drawings of horses….just horses. So for me the rare chance I get to be around them is like eating nothing but junk food for a day or traveling somewhere exciting. Maybe heaven. As the problems with my hip get worse I really don’t know how far I can go with riding. It is a issue that has begun to effect sitting at my drafting table, as well. Any extended period of immobility causes me discomfort. I often lament to my husband that I had not a thing wrong with me until I entered my thirties. Then came some sort of unidentifiable hip issue, allergies and the big one: endometriosis. I am convinced that they are all tied together somehow….someway and that they are meant to be. So, when I get to embark on a ‘pony ride’ I experience a hint of heaven and when my infirmities speak I remember that I am not supposed to live here…….

fast food entertainment

I decided a few months ago that television is slowly eating away my life and that I needed to read more so I started ‘Joan of Arc- Her Story’ by Regine Pernoud. I found it really hard to absorb being written in a academic style. So I picked up ‘Hemingway’ by Kenneth Lynn……I still had a hard time wanting to skip passages and get on with it. I suddenly realized how damaging t.v. has been…… I want to use a remote control for the books as well to get to the interesting parts. Fast food entertainment has made me REALLY LAZY. And though we don’t watch nearly as much television as a lot of folks, I am totally shocked at how much it has formed how I work. When I begin a new painting I find myself demanding subconsciously that it already be done or that I should just easily create the work and get on with the next. I am so divided in my focus jumping from one thing to the next like flipping channels. I hate that.

the great aloneness

There is a great aloneness to making art. No one tells you which ideas to pursue or how to convey those ideas. In each moment that an aspect of a work is confronted…a direction chosen in its progression…the death of countless others occurs. And when the completion of that work comes there is almost a mourning over what a piece could have been had you chosen another approach. So the decision making process in creating a work of art is overwhelming. With artists like myself who work largely from a surreal and imagined realm these issues are magnified ten-fold. I don’t use a set of rules and techniques to tell me how to work and I don’t copy from what I see. Those who work in this way have most of their work done for them once they master the assigned rules. Someone long before has already figured out the techniques and someone has already created the subject. On the rare occasion that I work from conscious reality not only do I find fewer challenges but I also find myself less interested…..

vincent

….in the low tide of my creative ocean. One of my heroes Vincent Van Gogh produced over 2,100 works in his short lifetime…..but then again he also shot himself at 37.

Most things have been on the back burner as we begin planning our move to D.C. in pursuit of graduate school. It is unbelievably expensive to live in the metro area and we are awaking to the reality that Atlanta is one of the most affordable cities in which to live….we didn’t know just how good we have it. As daunting as the high rents, pet rent (what a rip-off…), and ridiculous non-refundable deposits are to a student and an artist, we push on. Our life philosophy with shoes on……

I saw some guy with a t-shirt on that said "A lot of art is boring"……..right on.