WHY MAKE ART ?

Many times during my life as a professional artist I have asked myself:
“What am I doing this for and does it matter?”
Many people contribute in a concrete and obvious way to the well being and progress of humankind but the artist dances or plays music; some paint or write poetry and many of us ask:
“What is the purpose of art?”
And yet art has existed as long as people have had time to pause and reflect on their conscious existence.There are many factors which motivate artists but most of these are lost with the individual’s passing. Still the work may continue to contribute to the social fabic long after the individual artist is forgotten.

Through history the artist has been the guardian of the human spirit. The poet, the painter, the dancer....we have all been charged with creating work which will preserve from one generation to the next the warp upon which current events are woven. Among those spiritual threads which wind back through time we find love, honesty, beauty, truth, community and compassion. This guardianship is the work of the artist because we cannot trust any social institution with that job; not government, not historians, not big buisness, not religion (At least not yours !) not the media, not even the schools. Only the work of the artist can be trusted with the human spirit.

I GOT CLARITY THIS MORNING AROUND WHAT DIRECTION TO GO WITH MY PAINTINGS. IN THIS ECONOMY PEOPLE WILL NOT BUY ART AND PUT IT IN THE CLOSET TO FRAME NEXT WEEK. THEY WILL NOT BUY JUST TO HAVE A PACKAGE TO CARRY AROUND THE SHOW. I THINK THE COLLECTORS WILL LOOK FOR MEANINGFUL ART THAT SHOWS EFFORT AND INTELLIGENCE. ART THAT HAS INFORMATIONAL CONTENT BEYOND THE VISUAL. I KNOW THE GEMS ARE WHERE I NEED TO MOVE. THEY ARE READY TO HANG COMPLETE TREASURES, FRONT, BACK AND SIDES. THEY HAVE A COHESIVE STYLE AND SIGNIFICANT CONTENT.

RULES ! There are rules from day one. If I want to make a painting or write story someone will always tell me the RIGHT WAY.All the rules do is slow me down and get in the way of creativity and self expression. Of course there are rules that protect other people or property or protect us from ourselves. I am not talking about laws. I am talking about painting fat over lean or lean over fat, "avoid detailed descriptions of characters" and eyes are not almonds.
When teaching, I always tell the class "there is no right way or wrong way to do anything but there are consequences." The paint may crack or the apples may seem to float above the table and if that is OK so be it. It is not wrong. It is just what happens.

WHERE HAS ALL THE MONEY GONE?
As I listened to the news on NPR this morning I wondered how long will it be and will the economy ever get back to where it was?
And then I wondered how did we get here and is there an easy way to understand what happened in the past year or two?

The other day I heard an "economist" say that we need to start buying again ! Isn't that what got us here? Don't we have enough "stuff ?"

I think that in order to keep the economy expanding the financial powers have given us more money. The way they have done this is by helping us buy houses, driving the home values up and providing home equity loans for additional spending. Just owning a home necessitates spending a lot of money which stimulates more business. The problem is that we couldn't afford those homes. We couldn't keep buying stuff just to have more of it. The cost of houses was driven up beyond their real value which created imaginary wealth. We might have been able to slide back and adjust the economy except that the financial institutions began to "bundle" that imaginary wealth and sell it to investors. This got really confusing and with computers it started to accelerate. Instead of going downtown and talking to your banker about investing a little extra cash it was a click of the mouse and millions of dollars jumped around like popcorn. When we finally realized the Emperor had no clothes all the investors tried to call in their investments but very quickly the fat was in the fire and the imaginary wealth evaporated.

CREATIVITY IS USUALLY THOUGHT OF AS A POSITIVE ATTRIBUTE ASSOCIATED WITH GENIUS AND GREAT ARTISTS. PARENTS WANT THEIR CHILDREN TO BE CREATIVE. TEACHERS ENCOURAGE CREATIVITY IN SOME AREAS, NOT IN SPELLING OR MATH BUT IN WRITING AND ON ART PROJECTS. CREATIVITY IS NOT EASILY TURNED ON AND OFF AND BECAUSE THINKING "OUTSIDE THE BOX" MEANS STRETCHING OR BREAKING RULES IT CAN OFTEN GET A KID IN TROUBLE.

CREATIVITY IS LIKE ANY OTHER SKILL. IF WE PRACTICE WE GET BETTER AT BEING CREATIVE. IF WE MAKE IT A HABIT IT BECOMES EASIER.

A GIVEN PROBLEM ALWAYS HAS ANY NUMBER OF SOLUTIONS. WE USUALLY START LIMITING OPTIONS VERY EARLY. IF WE WANT TO EXAMINE NEW AND CREATIVE SOLUTIONS WE NEED TO SUSPEND ALL LIMITATIONS UNTIL WE HAVE A NUMBER CHOICES.

I AM OFTEN ASKED WHERE I GET MY IDEAS AND I TELL PEOPLE IT IS MY JOB TO HAVE IDEAS. IT IS NOT A TOTAL BLESSING BECAUSE I HAVE SO MANY IDEAS I HAVE TO DECIDE WHICH PROJECTS I HAVE TIME FOR AND MANY VERY GOOD IDEAS MUST BE SHELVED. I HAVE SKETCHBOOKS FULL OF IDEAS THAT WOULD TAKE SEVERAL LIFETIMES TO COMPLETELY EXPLORE.

We might write about anything. Robert Frost was inspired by the snowy woods. Van Gogh painted old shoes and he painted them with feeling and did it several times. The work doesn't tell us so much about the shoes or the woods as it tells us about the poet or the painter. We get a clear view of how their mind works. In a way each good work of art becomes autobiographical.
I reread a book by Natalie Goldberg recently entitled LIVING COLOR. In it she tells of how she thought Picasso was a "genius creator" until she read a biography and decided the man was cruel and she no longer cared for his work. Natalie might have taken a hint from the way Picasso painted women. The way he twisted their faces and moved features around. Using distortion and sacrificing realism for artistic expression. The man is all there in his paintings.

Getting my feet wet in the BLOG pond.

With the dark of winter and the quiet of the house I thought I might make an effort to write. A journal sounds good but the computer and the internet add a little more of a contemporary feel to the project. It seems like someone is out there in the world reading this already although I don't want to write for anyone else. I want this to be simple and not scary. However it is a stretch.