The Art of Becoming
Making art is exploration. It is the act of becoming. We take what we have inside and bear witness to its messy beginnings, the warp and woof of it's threads and momentums, and weave it together to make the most beautiful vision we can - the most precious thing - of the art which is ours. And even that which is "ugly" can still be the most beautiful if done with love. It all leads back to that.
All of life is art. The act of life is art. Whatever is the thing which makes your soul sing, that is your art and when you do it well - when you preform your art - you feel alive. This is what art-making is. It is to be alive. It is practicing our own ever-becoming selves of this ever-becoming now.
The Beauty of Original Art
To own an original painting is as if to have the original playing - the live perfect performance - of a song. I've met many a musician who has, in a painting I've made, seen a visual representation of a song, much as I've heard many a song and, in that song, heard an auditory journey of a particular image.
Imagine if you could own Jimi Hendrix's "Axis" or Beethoven's 5th or Miles Davis' "Agartha". And so on. The canvas print of a painting is like the pristine vinyl recording. Paper prints and posters are like good quality CDs or your variable-kbps mp3. But the original work with all the nuance of brushtroke, the shifting tonality of the finish of the canvas, the ridges and craftsmanship of the paint: there is only one.
Monet, His Waterlilies, and the Creative Drive
“Yesterday I resumed work. It’s the best way to avoid thinking of these sad times. All the same, I feel ashamed to think about my little researches into form and colour while so many people are suffering and dying...”
- Claude Monet - 1914 (While working on his water lilies paintings during World War I.)
From: Wartime water lilies: how Monet created his garden at Giverny
I feel like this sometimes. There's so much going on. There's this endless stream of chaos beating down my door. Who am I to turn my back on this issue or that issue and "resume my little researches into form and colour" while so much pain and suffering exists. Maybe it's the fact that joy CAN exist side by side with the pain.
Woman At A Bar
I wonder if anyone at an art show in 1900 said "O, look, ANOTHER painting of a woman at a bar." There's SO many paintings of a woman at a bar. Woman drinking at a bar. Woman sitting at a table near a bar. Then, sometime in 1945, Max Ernst comes along and says, "Hold my absinthe" and he paints 'The Cocktail Drinker."
The reason I mention this is you might look out on the artistic landscape and say: o another profile of a face, another soup of abstraction, another... and so on. But these paintings become the visual language of our current times. Out of those, arise a few particularly noteworthy pieces and we use those in the future to guide our understandings of ourselves.
Dear Artist
Dear Artist,
Often, when asked what advice I might give to you, I say something like, “Practice!” Or, “Do it every day!” Or some such thing. Everyone says it and it's true. But the deeper truth is - all of that is meaningless if not for one thing. There is only one real insight I can offer you:
YOU HAVE TO LOVE IT.
Why Art is Expensive :or: Pricing Your Art So You Can Live
First, I will say what this post is not. This is not about what gives art value. I've written other pieces about that and probably will again. Nor is this about, say, why a David Hockney painting sold for $90.3 million. That isn't a question of 'why is art expensive' but 'why is it SO expensive' and that question has also been discussed elsewhere.
Instead, we're simply going to talk about the cost of a work of art as an equation of what goes into it, what one (in this case, the artist) should reasonably expect to get out of it, and how that creates the space for further explorations.
The Emotional State of the Image
"I painted picture upon picture in keeping with the impression made on my eye in a moment of heightened emotion – painted the lines and colours that remained fastened to my inner eye... By painting the colours and lines and shapes I had seen in an emotional state – I wished to recapture the quivering quality of the emotional atmosphere like a phonograph."
Edvard Munch
This. A painting I make is based upon an impression made upon me by the experience of an emotional state. It is to be seen as if listening to a song.
How to Be a Painter I
Look: you have to have complete understanding of when your hand is heavy handed, and when it is light. What that feels like, and how to hold the brush. Sometimes though you need to be heavy handed and sometimes light and you need to know that too. How to be able to hold the brush so lightly that, any lighter, and you would drop it. How to hold the brush firmly and yet, still allow it to have give - to feel the push and pull of the canvas on the brush as much as the hand that seeks to drive it.
You should know how to dip your brush in the water so only a millimeter of it’s tip is submerged but pull it out quick so it only has one drop of water on it. If it has two, you will know before your brush even touches the canvas, so flick it aside with just the quickest and limberest flicks of the wrist, and the extra drop of water will fly away and not defile your painting and create a headache and drip down below you onto that perfectly and profoundly finished sky. And you must be able to do that in a split second because, thought you need a touch more water, you have no time to look away from the painting because it is all happening there. The flower pot is becoming, the sky is opening, the waters are parting… the god of all of your gods is arriving and you can’t miss it for a second.
How to be a Painter II
No one can tell you how to be a painter, that's for certain. Better not try and figure it out either. You just have to do it. How do you breathe? Who taught you? How do you blink or how does your heart pump? Likewise, being a painter is just like that. It comes. Naturally.
Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber are two great colors to mix with just about anything. It seems like, after you play with them for a while, that our entire world is made up of those two colors in conjunction with everything else.
How to be a Painter III
It’s quite simple really – you just pick up the brush and you start. But when to start? Start before you get caught up elsewhere, before you get distracted, before the computer phone doorbell cat dog moth flies in your ear and whispers that there is something so important to do and is somewhere else and you had better do right fucking now. There will always be that thing that needs to get done right now. I’ve got a thousand of them, at least. And they get done, one by one. Always. Trust me. So forget about it. Just for a little bit. Let it pass through your mind but don’t engage it. It will be there when you get to it. If need be, keep a piece of paper next to you while you paint and if you think of that thing that you had better do, write it down! Then, when you are done painting, take a look there and, if you see what you need to do, then do it! In the meantime, engage the image, the paint, the lines and circles, the gradients and textures. Let yourself become immersed in it. If even for just a moment you forget about all else, and you, the rhythm of your hand, the color on the brush, the way it lays upon the canvas, the way you stand there, with your head cocked slightly – if even a millisecond a space is allowed to open between thought and thought and awareness creeps through, catches a glimpse of the YOU of all Yous – then you might want to consider the night a success. But if that thought stream doesn’t pause, doesn’t cease it’s endless I Me Mine then what are you gonna to do? I’ll be honest- some of my sweetest work came about when I wasn’t looking. When I suddenly noticed I wasn’t looking, wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing, was in the groove of thought, of music, of poetry if rhythm… even then… it is all the same river you see- the thought stream, the vision, the glimpse of You, the wide open long-range vista of Awareness with a capital A, the pain in your lower back from bending over for so long, the kink in your neck, the thought once again of all you really must need go DO. Yet, in the storm of all of that - of the grinding political storm - keep your hand supple- almost drop the brush all the time, allow it to rest there but don’t grip it, a gripped brush has no give. Every ounce of you ought to be like the fabled reed in the wind- making music in the river of breezes. Know when to change colors- when to add some purple, some magenta – the deep magenta, not the light magenta. Know why you are doing so. Be true to your color palette of choice- if you are going for earth tones- go with earth tones! But if a dash of light magenta or bright turquoise wants to step in and add itself- check it at the door, make sure it has an invitation. Intuition is the gate keeper here and if Intuition says c’mon in, then by all means Let It! You might be surprised the spice it might add to the party on the canvas. That's the funny thing about painting, about creating, about life- intuition is the gate keeper but there is another who would seek to wear that mask although it wears that mask beneath many others and it has a penchant for turning everyone away.Ultimately, it is only known as Fear. It is Illusion. It is the fear of being wrong, of making a mistake, of being too much or too little, fear of everything, fear of nothing. Fear that the magenta is a fools color and not to be taken seriously. Fear that your parents never liked turquoise. Fear that your loved one might come in behind you and say “WTF?! Lemon Yellow eyes?” Cause they just might. But intuition, especially if it’s been given a chance to stretch it’s wings, will never steer you wrong. Go with it. Trust me. Trust it. It’s like riding a bike. Of course, those first few times of riding that bike were a bit unsteady. So were, sometimes, those first times of trying to discern which was the voice of intuition and which was otherwise. One moment you’re listening to the Guiding Light, the Chief Principle, the next moment the voice of fear has shoved it’s way into the game and is wearing a mask that looks suspiciously similar but… So watch your mind! Watch where it leads you. It is not your mind that paints. Nor is it your heart. Nor your hand. Your whole being paints. By being the whole being, by letting your big toe paint, the tip of your ears, your breath- then you can truly realize the vision you seek. So you paint and grab those colors and splash them upon the canvas in well mannered daubs and violent eruptions. You watch lines form, and follow their curve, zigging left when it need to go left, zagging right when the time is right. Such is life.
But then you stop and you stop before your colors become mud, unless mud is really what you are after. And if you weren’t after mud but they became that anyways- who cares? There will be another chance, another time to paint. Another chance to coax diamonds from that mud.