Life Styles of the Anomalous & the Anonymous
Well crew, we’re all in this boat, euphemistically speaking. I think somebody installed a rollercoaster while I wasn’t looking; for here I am at the top of a precipice, looking down at disaster, starting to fall, again. The boat is rocking and I fear that I will not only fall, but fall out . . . into nothingness . . , meaning I have no idea where I’ll land. If I die I’ll land in heaven, but it’s this life that is so precarious.
The artist’s life is full of pitfalls because of the myriad of tiny decisions that one must make to bring a project to fruition. Will this decision make or break this painting ? . . . Yep, that color wash made a complete mess . . . You remember that I’d discovered the wonderful computer program that helped me design pictures ? The above graphic shows forth it’s worth. The problem came when I started to paint. I did the first work in blues to get a feel for the values and center of interest; a good preliminary step. The next step introduced color whence came a flood of problems. I’ve gone through four sheets of watercolor paper so far. Each painting has something I like, but the majority of each work crashed. Finally, I remembered a quote from Frank Web’s book, Web On Watercolor =
“The way of painting is the way of trial and error. There is no shortcut. Each of us starts from zero and cannot resume where another left off. Each false start, each utter failure, is part of the fabric of an art career. If you do not have the grit to confront your own ignorance and if you are not willing to ruin acres of paper, you are in the wrong field.
Few pursuits are so dependent on the self. Painting is a fight for a personal life. Today our culture is dominated by mechanical and electronic triumphs that foster mass production, mass media, and mass values. This culture can brutalize one’s sense of a personal life. The painter is a silent rebel among all these depersonalizing forces.”
My daily journal and a by-monthly artist’s blog address the issues in Web’s quote. I may need solitude to paint as well as to write, but I also need contact with others. Some of you may be artists (painting, writing, crafting). Some of you simply understand the need for personal expression. I believe we create our own life styles; choosing things to do and groups to do things with. We’re all in a creative endeavor. Few simply allow things to happen.
OldeLar refused to have wallpaper in his home, but loved his LazyBoy chair and chose his morning newspapers very carefully. Also, he would not allow any of my paintings to hang in his home office. Thusly he thought he was not participating in creation. At first his behaviors insulted me, but later I came to realize that he feared the ”arts.” That one is hard to explain, but I understood that he was trapped in his left brain. Interestingly, I am fairly even brained. I use to tease him about that, jovially, to try to explain to him how his lofty left-brained censorship truly caused him to miss out. I think he feared the arts in a jealous way; not that he’d have allowed that explanation. If he kept my paintings out of his office where he did his important international patent work, the artwork could not compete for a visiting client’s attentions.
OldeLar loved Blue Grass music and took me to many local concerts and to Merle Fest in NC where I gathered photographs and painted several successful works, o
ne especially for his birthday. Even that picture did not make it into his office. After Lar died, I gave that painting to a good friend. Yes, it hurt, even if I did understand. Maybe OldeLar taught me how much we truly do create our own life style.
You can’t get away from it. Mr. Web said if we couldn’t go through acres of paper we were in the wrong business. How does that translate into a “regular” life ? = You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs; reach out and touch lots of people; try new things and not be afraid of all the messes you make before achievement; if only in a personal way. I know that cash on barrelhead keeps the motor running, but personal fulfillment actually comes first. You sell what you’re good at.
An acquaintance asked me not to send her anymore emails about the war. She’s “agin it”. I’ve another friend that sends me all kinds of political stuff. I read some of it, delete some of it and pass a very few along. Politics is not my bailiwick. According to my beliefs I am choosing not to make it part of my life style and probably am missing out on something, but I can’t put my finger on what that might be, ho ho ho. We each sensor what we take in and what we leave out. That’s a given. There’s too much to take in . . . so we choose . . . assemble a life . . . a style . . .
The fifth attempt was the charm for “Harbor Craft”, a transparent watercolor on 300lb cold pressed paper.
It’s time for me to go wrestle another acre of paper.
See you in the funnies.
