I'm Looking For an Experience
There is, at times, a strange disconnect between the actual experience of making art and the experience of sharing it. One feeds us from the inside, the other connects us to the outside. To paint is one thing. Sharing an object you’ve created is entirely another. There’s a clear difference between running, in the semi-professional sense of the word, the business of being an “artist” and the (often difficult and unseen) process each of us goes through creating art. Even for a hobbyist, there is the public… and the private. The two states are linked— perhaps they both even need each other— but what drives the two experiences is totally different, and often contradictory.
It’s tricksy.
It’s almost impossible not to become invested emotionally in something that one dedicates a lot of time to, and folks (myself included) spend a lot of time painting for a class, or a show, or a gallery, or a gift. We are not all zen monks, painting on leaves that we throw into the wind. Don’t we all want to paint better? Don’t we all want to arrive at what we’ve defined as success? To connect. To show the public what matters to us, and to hope it matters to others too. No man is an island. There is an opportunity to reach an audience, and we strive for it.
It’s easy to see why too. We can point at a painting and stare at it. A completed painting is a tool through which we can view ourselves from the outside, a way to listen to a version of ourselves. Through it, we can judge and share ourselves with others. The directness with which you can connect to another person, through the painting you yourself created, can be very rewarding. We critique it with a teacher or our spouse, give it as a gift, are in shows, or a co-op, or a gallery. And, no doubt, there’s a pleasure inherent in selling a piece, because it represents a connection to someone else. And that public experience of viewing the art of someone else, of looking into the window of a painting, and then coming back to your own space, touched in some way… Isn’t that often why we came to the easel in the first place? We wanted to become magicians too! Or so it was for me.
So, I don’t want to diminish the public portion of making art. What is storytelling without a listener? It’s important. Yet… the business of sharing, selling, critiquing, or viewing a painting is very obviously not the same as making one. All of that is what occurs—after. It’s a very fickle, and a very finite, business. We’re not in control… of whether a piece is purchased or chosen or validated. And success, when it does occur, passes very quickly. The taste doesn’t last very long. It’s definitely not what fuels me to continue trying when I feel inadequate or uninterested or tired of failing.
For that, I need something private.
And the process of creation, when you really hunker down and get to real work of it, to the play of it, is ephemeral and intimate. The act of painting is not always, but can be sometimes be, a testament to holiness. At its best, the art-object is a record of awareness and being. But more importantly, it’s an experience to undergo. When we paint, we hone ourselves. We practice the art of paying attention. Like praying or meditating, it is not for sale. Like a top, we spin, generating in the act of painting the energy with which we fuel ourselves. Even when I find a painting unsuccessful, when when my marks do not clearly represent what I am experiencing, I still enjoy the act of painting. The painting is what remains after we’ve completed the act of creation, to stare back at us, like shells washed up on a beach. Sometimes we collect beautiful shells, but we experience waves.