Have you ever had that experience where you try to sort out what part of your art is driven by the desire to "show and sell"--and what part is just you, pure and simple? (As if one could easily separate those parts.) I'm at that point in my collage work.
Just for right now, I want to strip my work down to basics. I want to remove the glaze of "made for exhibition." In order to figure out a plan, I spent an hour in conversation with my friend
Beth Rommel. Beth lives in Florida and we met in
Alyson Stanfield's Artbiz Blastoff course where we discovered we had the right mix of things in common; two twenty something children, a certain whimsical bent in our artwork, and the same intense commitment to art that we brought to raising children. Beth, always the mistress of new ideas, came up with one that I'm going to give a trial run.
"How about just painting something you want to keep?" she asked. As she said this, I saw myself at eleven, crouched down on a creek bank in back of our house, digging out clay and discovering that earth clings to itself and can be shaped into vessels.
It's that purity of discovery that I plan to pursue. Stay posted. Literally.
Love this post! And looking forward reading about your pursuit.
ReplyDeleteI think that's the only way to create ....that way it's from the heart ..true to yourself....i had the same conversation with my partner he is a singer songwriter and he was trying to sell his songs ...but he was trying to imagine what his audience would like to buy.....the songs lost their heart as he was not writing from his soul...i encouraged him to forget the commercial side ....our art has to show the passion we have ....Lorna
ReplyDeleteThis is a universal artist's question. I can't wait to see how you feel about your piece "for keeps."
ReplyDeleteI do find that knowing there is an upcoming show can pressure me in a good way to produce work I wouldn't have if I was just painting for me.
Thank you Joyita and Hannah P.--all of what you say is true. The truth is, I do have a show coming up, and I find that its a tricky balancing act--between staying true and moving deeper in the collage work using the show as stimulus and falling back into anxiety the results of which are flatter, less interesting pieces. Today after writing the post was a joy. I was unmitigatingly sentimental in the studio!
ReplyDeleteI like to take a break and make things just for me. Sometimes the drive to sell alters what you make. Of course I have been making this huge sailing collage to hang in our bedroom and now I am thinking about putting in a show! I look forwarded to seeing what you make for keeps.
ReplyDeleteHannah, this is wonderful! To me art is easier and becomes "real", when create from that place within us that is pure and heat-felt. Bravo!
ReplyDeletePS--- like your use of "bold" highlights and nice "link love" too.
Gorgeous photo...are those your hands? YUM!
ReplyDeleteGreat post...provocative and timeless issues for us artist types.
Claudine, Susan and Iona, I've had a great time with the "for keeps" project and want to take some pictures to post. (Taking the pictures is the hardest part. I need to climb into the 21st c!) I think the tough part of creating from within is tearing away the debris that keeps us from that deep part of ourselves. When we finally get there, there is that taste of "flow" that is so often spoken of in art, music and sports.
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