Fear of Knowledge

I sat in the third row,
the third seat back
and watched Janet Stinchcomb
pass out the Scholastic Science magazines.
Janet was the teacher’s pet,
always selected to be freed
from the prison of the student desk.
That’s why the boys called her Janet Stinkbomb.
We got science magazines because
the school board wouldn’t afford
to hire a science teacher.
On the back of every issue was a picture
of jungle underbrush, or the dead dry grasses
of the veldt, or the reeds of a stagnate pond
and at the top of the page
in arrogant type was a question
that felt like a dare:
CAN YOU SEE THE ELEPHANT?
I looked at those pictures as if it mattered.
I would squint, turn my head away and
then look back suddenly
hoping to startle hidden prey,
just enough to make it move.
Eventually, inevitably I would see the elephant
or the wildebeest, or the Greater Red Musk Shrew
or whatever beast that week was hidden
by the chaos of shadows, leaves, and
dappled sunlight.

I have never forgotten the lesson
of these photos: Once I saw
the elephant, I could never
not see it again.

Early June 2010 paintings

Archival Painting: Is It Worth It?

I don’t make a lot of money. Compared to most of the world I’m rich, but I’m entangled by the trappings of Western civilization. I have two vehicles, a house, with payments, and high medical expenses that will only stop when I do. For this reason, I am a cheapo when it comes to my art supplies. For example, I don’t buy tubes of watercolor or acrylic paint. I buy those little bottles of craft acrylic paint. Is that wrong? I am told that the quality of the pigment and the acrylic binders are best with tubes of paint, but how much better? Will the tube paints cause a painting to last 500 years, while the craft acrylic paint will last only 400 years. A tube of acrylic paint may cost me $4.00 and if I wait for a sale I can sometimes get a bottle for 48 cents.

I varnish my paintings using acrylic varnish, but instead of buying a jar of Liquatex Acrylic Varnish I get the stuff they sell at Home Depot or Lowes. I get about 4 times more varnish for about the same cost.

If I have a gift card I’ll buy canvas at the local arts and craft store, but if I have to pay out of my pocket I get a bucket of gesso and a sheet of hardboard. I cut the hardboard to size. I put one coat of gesso on the sanded smooth side, and then I use water based primer to put enough coats on the hardboard to make it white.

I’m told that I am just not taking the care to ensure my work is going to last.

This cheapo thing I’m doing has many advantages for me AND it conforms to my outlook on life.

THE ADVANTAGE

The advantage is that if the materials are cheap, I can afford to paint more. I don’t believe my work is going to be treasured by the future beings, and I’m not painting for them. My desire is to paint.

I have a friend, Richard Montgomery, now a philosophy professor in West Virginia, but 40 years ago we were in a creative writing class together. Richard wrote a story about an artist painting a picture. The majority of the story is about the intensity of his focus as he created this picture. At the end of the story the artist sees the whole work, he is pleased with his efforts. The next thing the artist does is burn the painting. Why? Because the importance is creating art is the creating, not the admiration of the piece after it is done. That story has never left my mind.

Early in my life my family admired creativity, but the focus was in having the completed work. The stress was for the work to last beyond our own lifetime. The purpose of creating a picture, or a poem, or a novel is to have that finished product last longer than the artist lasts. The emphasis was on leaving a trace of one’s existence.

Early in my creative life I bought that pile of horse hockey, so I got protective and possessive of everything I created. Later I noticed that my focus on making stuff for posterity was keeping me from working every day. I had to make some choices:

Do I want to have been an artist, or do I want to be an artist right now.
Do I want the title, or do I want to paint pictures.
Do I want to talk about writing, or do I want to write.

MY OUTLOOK ON LIFE

I believe that someday, life on earth will end. Some day our planet will resemble Mars. I believe that all art will deteriorate eventually. The question is not will an art work last, but how long will it last. The lasting forever is not one of the choices. There is a point where every work of art will crumble into dust.

No artist can know how long his work is going to last, will it be admired, treasured, preserved. Leonardo DaVinci probably painted hundred’s of pictures, but only a handful have been preserved. If posterity is what matters, then you are not an artist you’re a narcissist. Because I believe that in time every trace of me will be dust, my focus is in the creating. I can do the creating with cheap materials. I have no fear that my work is going to crumble and fade during my lifetime. My work is going to out last me. I feel certain it will last as long as it needs to last.

I have a brother that tells me he likes my work. I have given him half a dozen paintings. Recently I learned that he re-gifted them. I have another brother who accepted paintings, claimed to like them, but, when I went to his home I noticed my work was no where to be seen. I gave a close friend a large watercolor that I spent $100 to frame, and he hung it in the junk room of his house. It hangs on a wall and is enjoyed by the ironing board, and stored Christmas decorations.

I have very little reason to believe people are going to value my work. Some are polite and say that it is nice, but few people like it enough to buy it. The thing is, I paint now. Now is when I exist. Now is what matters. And my NOWs are enhanced by the act of doing some creative work. After that, well, I just don’t have a clue.

The Art I Like Most

There are a lot of art work that I just can’t stop loving. I have a catholic taste in art, allowing me to enjoy so called realism, impressionism, surrealism, folk art-outsider art, and actually the isms just don’t matter to me. I also like illustration art.

I am an Andrew Wyeth fan. I am certain I will love Christina's World for the rest of my life. http://www.michaelarnoldart.com/christinas_world.jpg

I am powerfully moved by the work of Jack Unruh. http://www.jackunruh.com/home.html My father was a commercial artist (not an illustrator) but because ads were so important to my dad, I grew up loving illustrators.

In my opinion Brad Holland is just a wonderful illustrator http://www.bradholland.net/

The best artist I ever met personally is D.J. Lafon
http://www.askart.com/askart/l/dee_j_lafon/dee_j_lafon.aspx Lafon was head of the art department at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. I took a large landscape to his home and he gave me some insights from what he observed.

It is somewhat odd that I would like illustrators since I have such an aversion to creating paintings or drawings requested by other people. I recall Andrew Wyeth painted a picture of Eisenhower http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/MWEBimages/aa_mm/thumb/M64_67.JPG as a cover for Time magazine. The act was so unpleasant to him that he never took another illustrator’s job.

Years later Andrew Wyeth’s son, Jamie Wyeth http://www.jamiewyeth.com/ was commissioned by the Kennedy family to do a portrait of John F. Kennedy http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/exploring/ballet/nw/images/wy_works/Portrait-of-JFK_300.jpg a work I find wonderful, but it was rejected by the Kennedy Family.

I have taken commissions from time to time. I have done cover illustrations for publications produced by some organization I was associated with, but I have never felt good about a requested art work. I imagine my low self-esteem has something to do with it. I have no problem selling a painting. If someone sees something I have done and they would like to have it, well, it is for sale. I’m getting a storage problem so selling my work is needed to free up space for new work.

But if someone asks for a painting I feel like I have to please the buyer before I start. I am not painting something that pleases me, I am trying to guess what someone else will like, and if I fail to guess what they wanted, well, I failed.

I have enough failure in my life. I don’t need to put myself in situations where I am open to criticism and rejection. I suppose I should “man-up.” I need to grow a spine. I need to be compassionate to myself and if someone wants to call me a failure I need to tell them to go screw themselves.

So, while I hate painting assignments, I still admire illustrations. It turns out that the fine art, and folk art that I like the most has an illustrator sense about them.

I don’t just like lines on a page, or dabs, and washes and smears of color. It is not the competence of an artist’s skill that draws me to their work, it is a work of art that says something to me. I don’t have to know the story that was in the artist’s mind, I just want to be intrigued.

The late Alan E. Cober http://www.letralia.com/ciudad/yusti/imagenes/mente.jpg thrills me.

I’ve loved the works of Franklin McMahon http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01185/arts-graphics-2008_1185467a.jpg

There are millions of skilled artists competent in their work, but regardless of their ability, the work resonates with me when the work is more than good painting, more than skilled drawing, more than accomplished technicians in photography, or collage, or whatever else they are doing. The work has to contain something more than the visual. The art I admire most is art that contains some trace of the living being that created it.

What is Art?

"Art is the lie that tells the truth."
-- Pablo Picasso

I heard the Picasso quote many years ago, and loved it. The phrase is, essentially, a SOUND BITE,. Picasso’s definition of art is short, concise, easy to remember, and it was made by someone generally accepted by most of the world as an authority on the subject, so, geez, what’s not to like?

I have coffee cups, and tee-shirt messages, tattoos, bumper stickers, and notebooks filled with quotations. There are millions of us that have attempted to form our philosophy of life from bumper stickers and distill our view of all facets of existence to aphorisms and clichés’

Of course the joy of an aphorism is that it can be called on in a debate, and it has been heard so often that it is often just accepted. Maxims become truth. The problem with leaning on quotable quotes is that it ends the debate, and what should have been an essay becomes 8 words accepted without analysis.

WHAT IS ART? When I look at the sound bite attempts to answer the question, I find myself simultaneously impressed and incredulous.

A picture is a poem without words.
Horace

Maybe so, since a picture is worth a thousand words.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
John Ruskin

Really? If you create a work of art because you enjoy throwing a pot, or painting a canvas, and have no thoughts about reality or truth, then what are you doing?

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
Twyla Tharp

The sense that you zone out while painting, is a sensation I experience almost daily, but is it possible people watching a football game are also running away without leaving home?

I think there is just a whole lot of BS yammering going on about art, artists, and talent.

I have two thoughts about becoming or being an artist.

FIRST: Anyone could develop an ability to draw, or paint. All it takes to draw something is to have dedicated thousands of hours of your life practicing. Author and artist Christy Brown, born with cerebral palsy, wrote a memoir entitled MY LEFT FOOT. The book was turned into a movie in 1989 directed by Jim Sheridan and starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Christy Brown had control over only one part of his body, his left foot. With that one area of bodily control he managed to write several books and paint numerous paintings. Painting a picture with your foot seems impossible, but clearly it is possible. The reason Mr. Brown could paint and type with his left foot is because he practiced. He wrote and painted every day.

There are dozens of quadriplegic artists painting amazing pictures while holding the brush in their teeth.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/quadriplegic-artist-finds-release-by-painting-with-his-mouth/1068344

http://www.allbusiness.com/education-training/students-student-life/13978670-1.html

It is not eye/hand coordination that enables you to paint, it is practice. You learn to paint by painting and you learn to write by writing, skaters learn to do the triple axis by practicing, any difficult task is learned by trying relentlessly.

I believe ANYONE without profound disabilities can become an accomplished artist. This brings me to my next thought.

TWO: One trait common to all artists is their motivated to practice. Anyone can draw if they will only try to draw a few thousand pictures within as short an amount of time as possible.

There is no secret about how to create accomplished art work. If you do anything a thousand times you will be better at it than you were on try one, or even try fifty. There is no HOW TO secret about art, but that doesn’t explain why some are artists and some are not. There is still a secret, there is still a question I can’t answer and that question is this:

WHY ARE SOME MOTIVATED? Why do some work at their art for months, and years, and for the majority of their life?

I have no answer. I know, for me, if I have family obligations, or household chores that prevent me from painting and writing for a day or so, I feel wrong. Something is off. I get nervous and fidgety. I carry a sketch journal. If I’m in a waiting room and have nothing to write or sketch in I feel like at a big event with my zipper down. Something is wrong. Something is not right. I don’t want to feel this way again. I rarely go anywhere without some outlet for my creative urge.

Why do some of us have this creative urge and why do others not have it? Maybe we all have a creative urge, but some are focused on other things. Donald Trump’s creative urge may be focused on business and sexy women with thick accents.

As a former high school teacher I figured out that teachers don’t teach anything. Teaching is not pouring knowledge into a kid’s head. All education is self-education. If you want to learn something badly enough you will learn it. The job of the teacher is not to dispense information, the job of a teacher is to motivate. If you can do something, say something, provide some activity that inspires a kid to want to learn something then they will teach themselves.

Teachers are not encyclopedias, they are cheerleaders. What goes for education goes for everything. The artist is not the one with talent, the artist is the one motivated to create art.

Hoffer said that where the development of talent is concerned, we are still at the food gathering stage. We don’t know how to grow it.