Seeing Art in a New Light

As some of you know, I have a job now that allows me to create paintings and to teach others to replicate them. Along with that, I have also been doing some works for friends of mine (on commission and once in a while as a gift).

What fascinates me most about art is how art pieces develop as a sort of conversation between you as the artist, and your materials. The materials you work with have their own rules and their own ways of working. Sometimes as you paint, elements aren't consistent. Sometimes you can't mix the exact shade you had before, sometimes your brush is wet still and the paint applies thinly. Sometimes you are working with multiple brands (and qualities) of paint.

I have come to discover that no art piece turns out the way I envision it in my head. It used to bother me because I always thought what I had created was worse than the beautiful image I imagined. After several years, I began to see that sometimes I created pieces better than I imagined them being and sometimes worse.

I am finally coming around to recognize that to compare the two is demeaning to the piece you created, to yourself as an artist, and to the creative process as a whole. What the creative process delivers is an art piece that is fully of meaning, intentional and unintentional, conscious and subconscious. What I imagine in my head doesn't ever involve me. I'm not necessary to the process. I like to take a backseat - I don't like to assert myself into my works for the most part. For the longest time, I thought my art could only be good so far as I was completely distanced from what I was creating.

Now I realize that art is art because of the artist. I still don't sign my works. I still don't want a name embedded in my works. I'm happy to get recognition for my work, but I want my art to stand on its own, acknowledging me with a nod or with a deep connection, but no longer subsisting off of me and my name.

I was thinking today about how the relationship of artist to their artworks are like the relationship of parent to children.

Sometimes I look at my art, the way it communicates ideas and what ideas is conveys, either intentionally or unintentionally. It reflects me, but is beyond me. It contains elements of me, but it reaches for something else and contains other elements that I don't possess. Sometimes my art pieces say things that embarrass me. Sometimes they say things that I am astounded they can say, because they are things I've never said before. Sometimes I have to take a second, longer look and wonder, "Is this element a reflection of me or is this reflecting something different?" Sometimes I have ideas of what I think it should say. I have goals and hopes for its purpose. But in the end, it's going to be what it's going to be. And even as I form it, it also forms me.

For example, I just finished a painting called "Easter Sunday". It is a pastel sunrise over rolling hills with a big white church built atop of it. As I was creating it, different things stood out to me.

1. Admittedly, I made this piece because I think it will sell well as an idea. I had no inclination to paint a church and to paint in pastel colors. I had no inclination to paint cartoonishly bright rolling hills. Easter is one of my least favorite holidays. I enjoyed making the painting, but I would not have made this painting for any other reason (at least not at this point in my life).

2. The sky was the most beautiful part of the painting.

3. The church was the most time consuming. I took the most care with it, using varying brush sizes, painting multiple coats of white to make sure none of the sky shone through beneath the church.

4. The hills were exceedingly bright and childish.

________

Given these details, two different interpretations of what I created began to emerge in my mind.

1. This was a childlike view of Easter - exaggerated colors and styles. Innocent. The backdrop existed only to showcase the beautiful church, which took the most amount of time. 

2. This was a critical view of every aspect of the set-up. The most beautiful thing, the sky, took the least amount of effort and it was hidden/obscured by a church. The church was meant to be the centerpiece, but it asserted itself there boldly and distinctly as the sky, the beautiful sky was reduced to a supporting role.

It began in my head as the first interpretation. But I realized that I didn't buy into it. The image I wanted to create was one that would sell. Because I was playing to an idea that I had no draw to to begin with, it turned into satire.

What gave it away? The hills. They were a bright, commercialized Easter green color. Like the color of the plastic grass that people put in Easter baskets. It looked plastic. It looked so  and empty against the complexity of the sky. It all felt so manufactured, created to elicit feelings which I myself didn't feel.

The painting spoke to me, showing me my own cynicism in regard to a "manufactured church", commercialization and consumerism, and the value of a "pretty picture". At that point I responded to what my painting was telling me. It felt disingenuous to begin with, but it wasn't too late to express truth.

I took the image more seriously. I put in more details to the church. The windows were no longer left as black gaping shapes. They were given lines for the window-frames. The roofing was given more texture. It was still no match for the sky, but it was no longer standing as its own satirical representation of a church.

The hills. The last thing I did was to fix the hills. At first I intended to cover up that plastic green altogether. But upon second thought, I wanted that story, that dialogue, and the gradual revelation of truth to be present. I painted a darker, shaded-looking grass color, leaving that bright green on the sides of the hill that the sunlight would reach. I mixed an even darker green and filled in the darkest areas.

And the painting was done. Does it look manufactured now? To me, yes, it does. But it is honest. It no longer mocks the fact that this is the case. It takes itself seriously. It may still have the manufactured appearance, but it's meaning is fuller than that now as a result of the dialogue I had with it. It even looks more beautiful and appealing than it did before. And now it poses questions that it didn't before.

Maybe no one else would see those things if not for this blog. But I do, and that's enough for me. Again, I am formed as I form my work. And had I only been wishing to paint what I envisioned, if I removed myself from the work entirely (if it were even possible), it wouldn't achieve the depth it now has and/or have the effect is has had on me.

Anyway, just an introduction to my world. I know this makes me sound crazy, but I'm okay with that. I'm an INFJ. Everything we see has worlds of meaning. It's the only way I know, and I hope my art, this blog, and my interactions with others are the better for it.