That was a relatively enjoyable two and a half hours outside in my steamy hot and ant-filled back yard. I’ll take some photos of the work accomplished after it has had a while to dry some more in the laundry room (better known as the Sauna & Bread Rising Room these days). I didn’t quite achieve the free-willing joy of painting like a four-year-old, but it was fun, and I don’t totally hate the work I got done on both canvases (more on that later as well). I have had an artistic block since my dad died (a very long time ago now), and I have to find some way to get under it, over it, around it, or through it … or I might as well pack away all the art stuff and not even try anymore. Maybe I am getting closer to just letting go again. I guess we shall see after I have forced myself to spend some more steamy afternoons in my yard painting.
I do know one thing. I need bigger canvases. Stretched ones too. No more of the panels. I am sick of the canvas panels. Yes … I need one really large stretched canvas.
Here’s the before shot showing me and all my stuff:
I ended up not using any of the brushes or tools at all. I did use the plate for rudimentary mixing as planned, and the only thing the spray bottle got used for was to cool myself off … and to attract ants. Oh yeah, the ants loved the spray bottle. And, you can see the painting I decided to paint over. Funny thing, once I decided I was done for the day and took another photo from the same angle, I think I decided the I like it better upside down. We’ll see how I feel about it after I haven’t looked at it for a few hours. :lol:
I’m going to go make a pear cobbler. Since I am only planning on making sandwiches for dinner tonight, I better make some kind of kick-butt dessert or there will be grumbling.
Behind the cut, the after photo of one “hot” artist. :rolleyes:
>I have had an artistic block since my dad died (a very long time ago now), and I have to find some way to get under it, over it, around it, or through it … or I might as well pack away all the art stuff and not even try anymore.
>I didn’t really realize that was what I was doing until a few years ago, when someone asked and I sat down to think about it, but when I say “you” in a post, it’s usually one particular person I have in mind and not the more general “you” of a group or audience. The person isn’t always the same person, and it is always one specific person that I know either in real life or on line.
I think for a few lucky people, art (or any endeavour) is about something that they must do, otherwise they would not be themselves anymore – and would therefore be insane. They
are defined by it.
I think for most of us, any endeavour which is not about feeding ourselves and our families is mostly about acceptance and approval from those who we deam worthy to give us acceptance and approval.
I seem to remember your father was a cartoonist – was your art driven from acceptance and approval from your dad – to match him and surpass him and to gain acceptance from him. Did your dad do art to feed your mum and yourself? Did he have an internal drive to have to do art – or was it because he was good at it and did it because he could feed his family from it.
As with your blog, could you create art by imagining a person as a worthy audience to your art? You can definitely create good art – but
the question you have to ask is why should you?
Oh my dad popped out of the womb drawing. Natural born artist with a drive to create. He never cared if he made money at it or not, and in general he didn’t really make a living at it. Cartooning was just in his blood. Later he expanded into commercial design and ad work, because, well, that tends to bring in food money. I don’t know that he enjoyed that all too much, but he was constantly drawing cartoons and working odd jobs at the same time.
I have the drive to create too, but I am more of a jack-of-all-trades rather than having one thing I really love and thus ended up really good at. I love painting. Really do. I could lose days and days painting if I didn’t have other life stuff that needed to be done. The bare-bones problem is I cannot paint the way I want to (no matter how many people I study under), and I hate my own work with a passion that knows no bounds. I enjoy the painting, I don’t tend to like the finished product.
My parents, both artists, were always very hands off on my artistic endeavors. They helped me get the tools I wanted or needed, but beyond that, little to no commentary or approval or disapproval. Neither of them ever critiqued anything I did beyond telling me to keep doing it if I enjoyed it. No, where I think I picked up the loathing of my own work (which yeah, suggests I am looking for someone to not loath it and approve of it) was when I struck out on my own and started studying with quasi-famous painters in college.
The one artist I studied with the longest, he sort of ruined me on painting. He never approved of anything I did. Not just didn’t approve, he outright criticized everything. I should have stopped studying with him much sooner than I did, but he was a friend of the family, and I loved his work. I wanted to paint like he did, but that wasn’t and isn’t in me. I think it was frustrating for both of us. That frustration came to an end the day he grabbed my paintbrush, said something snotty about what I was working on, and then applied brush strokes to my canvas to “fix” it. I packed up my things and walked out and never talked to him again. Unfortunately, the baggage of those years is still tucked away in my psyche. I don’t know why I cared so much what he thought, but I did. Young and impressionable, I guess.
I had a string of teachers who were just critical assholes. They meant well by it, I am sure, but it didn’t do me any good at all. I think I even know why they did it … to push me, test my boundaries of tolerance, and to see if I did have the drive to create. Would I stop creating just because they told me my stuff sucked, you know? It didn’t stop me, but it did make me feel bad about myself and my works.
The thing with my dad though, really, is that a few days before he died, I had taken some of my new stuff over to show him, really excited about my art at the time, and I told him I was really going to do something with my talent, I was fired up, I was going to jump back into the art world with both feet. And here I sit about ten years later, still not really having done anything with it but create a bunch of stuff clogging up the corners of my house.
It’s all really about just letting go of what is in me. It’s in there. I can feel it and see it in my mind’s eye, and if I am not creating something somehow, I do go crazy. I might put the paints and canvas away again for a while, but not just yet. I want to keep pushing it a bit longer. I feel sometimes so close to not caring what I or anyone else thinks about the end result, which is where I want to be. Even if I put away the paints, I’ll be doing something artsy though. Can’t help myself. Gotta be making something all the time.
I don’t know. You have given me something to think about. And it’s good hearing from you Roy. I was just thinking about you the other day and wondering if you were still out there somewhere. :)