I am rediscovering myself with my art.
When I was a kid, art came easy. If it came so easy, I thought it must not be worth anything.
I almost dropped out of high school and went on to almost drop out of society. I believed that schools were fascist institutions that scrub the creativity out of the individual.
I was a cowboy – an individualist - an iconoclast – a rebel.
I was a musician and a poet. I wanted people to listen to me. They didn’t. After 20 years, I hated to pick up my guitar – I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t remember what I was looking for.
Rebellion got me on my knees, midlife, broken!
So I threw away the rebel. I got clean and sober. I remembered my art – it was all I had left that had any spark. I went to school to study art and studied hard. I sat in the front row and rarely missed a day. I wanted to find what I had missed. The instructors filled me up with instructions. Then I graduated – twice!
I got a studio and surrounded myself with my student art. I worked my day job. I was trapped again - stifled by the rules they taught me.
I got sick. I thought I was gonna die. I panicked! I threw lots of art away. I threw people away. I almost threw it all away.
Pouting without an audience I turned inward. I raged. I sang (silently). Twitching to life, I filled sketchbooks with lots of drawings - fast and ugly. It was like blowing up balloons – just making things that filled up space and didn’t matter. I didn’t show my drawings to anybody.
Then something amazing happened: drawing got easy again. Privately, silently ... one by one … I’ve discarded rules for art that school taught me. For instance:
• Never copy photographs.
• Limit your palette.
• Paintings shouldn’t be made in a “paint by numbers” style.
• Observe things closely.
• Develop a consistent style.
• Pay attention to the assignment.
• Credit your sources.
• Paint beautiful things.
• Use the input from your friends who are artists.
• Network as an artist, cultivating relationships.
• If people like something you make, make more art in that style.
• Pay attention to the market.
• Be aware of what you are doing.
• Wait to finish a painting until you know what you are trying to do.
• Read a lot.
I saw patterns emerging in my drawings. I saw motifs emerge from the end of my pen as if I were a spectator.
I realized that I was unleashing my subconscious! Unlashing, uncaging, releasing!
Nobody sees what I’m doing.
Okay, I’ll show you ONE drawing. Er, part of one drawing:
More Later.
