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.

Is It A Hobby?

My long suffering wife, who (I believe) loves me as much as she can, said, "I think painting is a good hobby for you." As soon as I heard that word "hobby" it felt a little like I'd stepped on a shard of glass barefooted. Hobby? Is what I do a hobby?

Is what I do a hobby?

Does it matter? Why do I feel an aversion to the word?

The definition of a hobby is an activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure or relaxation. The activity is done for pleasure and relaxation and not for financial gain. Obviously a hobby might produce something that can be sold, and money can accumulate, but the reason one engages in the hobby is not to earn a living, it is to enjoy living.

Often I tell people that when I paint I zone out, it is like medication, self-hypnotism, it creates in me a sort of Buddhist calm, and since I have been, for years depressed and stressed, it seems prudent for me to involve myself in some activity that clears my mind of distractions, and focuses me on the moment only. When I paint, I forget time. When I paint the television becomes a talking lamp, the coffee in my cup goes untouched and grows cold. I work a late shift so I set the alarm on my cell phone to go off at 1:45 pm. This reminds me to stop painting and get ready to go to work. Without the alarm I could easily be late to work. When I paint, time ceases to exist, or at least time ceases to matter.' When I paint what matters is the painting.

Sometimes friends will ask me to paint something particular. Often they want a portrait of their dog, or a likeness of their dead mother. I have stopped taking such commissions. I've done it in the past and sometimes I've been successful, and sometimes not. The thing is, if I take a commission then suddenly I have to paint something that pleases someone else, someone who likely has a preconceived idea of what they want. I have no problem having someone say, "I like that picture, how much would you take for it." The picture is done. If someone wants to buy something already done, something that appeals to them, then fine. At no point was that picture painted to please that buyer, it was painted because I wanted to paint it. If I have an order to fill then the benefits of painting is, for me, diminished.

Sometimes, once I have finished a painting, I'll look at it and decide it sucks like a vacuum cleaner. Because I am struggle financially, I will often decide to paint over the sucky picture with primer and try again. Why waste a canvas? Nevertheless, even when I paint a picture and feel my efforts have failed, I still benefited from the painting. I enjoy painting a bad picture as much as I enjoy painting a good picture. Of course I don't enjoy looking at a failed end product, the action of painting did not fail.

Again, this all sounds like what I do is a hobby. It sounds like I paint because it helps me, pleases me, relaxes me, and I don't do it to make money. So what's wrong with calling it a hobby?

I guess I have this assumption that something done for money is serious and something done for pleasure and relaxation is trivial. If what I do is considered a hobby by other people then they are not going to honor my sacrifice of time on the altar of hobby.

When I looked at the origins of the word Hobby I found that the roots of the word go way back and are linked to our childhood toy, the hobby horse. Actually the toy's name goes back even further, perhaps to medieval days when a small horse (13 to 14 hands which is about 52 to 56 inches, or 130 to 140 centimeters) was bred for soldiers called Hobelars. The HOBBY was the name given to these small skirmishing horse. Since that horse was small, it made since to call the child's toy horse, a Hobby Horse. The Hobby Horse could actually be ridden, and it was fun to ride, but it took you nowhere. In a similar way our hobbies are real activities, they are fun to do, but the fun, and the doing is the purpose of that activity.


Well, maybe the purpose of my painting is not getting rich and famous, but it is more than a hobby to me. I need another category. I need to find another term. There are, I guess, passive hobbies and obsessive hobbies. What I do matters to me, and people who care about me MUST honor my devotion to painting. If you want to have a relationship with me, then part of me is my need to paint every day. (I also write every day.)

Yes, I miss days sometimes. My son recently got his PHD at Princeton, and my wife and I flew up there and spent 4 days with him. I didn't paint. I did bring a sketch pad, and I did sketch when I had time, but I didn't paint. I will still go shopping with Kathie, and make trips to the grocery store. I still mow the grass. I am not demanding that ONLY my needs matter. While Kathie has a relationship with me, I also have a relationship with her. I honor what matters to her.

I just hate calling what I do a hobby. I've read that Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting during his life time. Does that mean Van Gogh was just a hobbyist painter? Painting is part of who I am, and that means the value of painting is linked to my value as a human being.

I WISH I COULD DRAW LIKE THAT

Some people look at my doodles, or look at my paintings and I usually get the same comment: “I wish I could paint.” OR “I can’t even draw a straight line.” OR “I wish I had your talent.”

I usually reply in some way similar to this: “You not only could do the art work I do, but you could probably do it better than I do. All you need to do is do what I have done. I have drawn thousands of pictures. Most of the pictures I have drawn were on scraps of paper, or in the margins of workbooks, so I’m not claiming to have done thousands of finished, ready to be framed pictures. What I am saying is that I have sketched, doodled, and cartooned day after day for the past 60 years. I drew in school when I was supposed to be doing seat work. I drew in church as I endured two sermons on Sunday and one on Wednesday night. My parents thought drawing and painting were important so I was encouraged to draw and paint, supplies were made available to me, and while I didn’t call it practice, that is what it was. I practiced all the time.

A person who hasn’t drawn many pictures can’t expect to be as skilled as someone who has drawn 20, 000 pictures. But anyone who has drawn and painted as much as I have will be pretty good at it and lots of folks will be great at it.

What I think most people mean when they sigh and say they wish they could paint like I do, they mean that they wish they could just do what I do without ever having to do the practice. I wish I were thin without having to eat less. I wish I had muscles without having to lift weights.

Throughout history there have been these plumbs of artistic expression that seem to just happen. How can we explain that Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael all knew each other, were alive at about the same time, and about the same area on this earth? Or how about the Impressionists in France? Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Dagas Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gaugh and Lautrec all come on the scene at about the same period in history, in France, or they are drawn to France, and these guys knew each other. How can that be? What explains it?

Eric Hoffer writes some about this and in general he seems to think what is valued by society creates the talented. A kid that throws a ball well, in a society that honors sports, is likely to get encouragement to keep throwing that ball. A kid in Renaissance Italy might draw a picture on the side walk with a piece of chalk and the art lovers of their society will say, “Hey kid. That’s great. Draw some more.”

I have a good friend who argues with me and the example he uses to refute my view is singing. Some people just can’t carry a tune. Some people can take lessons, and practice and even love music, but they just can’t stay on tune. We all know people like that he says so clearly some people just get the gift of singing and some don’t.

It is a good point. I am not sure I agree, but I do recognize that the point is well made and not easily refuted.

Eric Hoffer said, "Where the development of talent is concerned, we are still at the food gathering stage." In other words, we may recognize talent, we might be able to go out and find talent and haul talent into the studio, but we have not yet learned how to grow talent. Our ability to plant the seeds of talent, to cultivate and nurture talent is just not something we as a society have learned do yet.

I guess the debate about art is similar to the debate about all human traits: is it nature or nurture, is it a gift, or a learned skill, is it etched on our DNA or is it learnable.

I want it to be learnable, because if it is a gift then I have it, or I don’t have it. It takes ME out of the equation. I want to believe that I can be an artist if I choose to be an artist. If YOU believe talent is a gift, and if YOU believe you didn’t get the gift then YOU will not try, and you will not develop the talent you admire.

Some of the April Paintings

I FEEL BETTER

I’ve lived with depression so long that I expect to be depressed. Depression has been the norm for me for the last 54 years. For me, not being depressed would be like rearranging the furniture in a blind man’s house. Everything in my life is where it has always been when I am depressed. I have actually started to fear that MAYBE depression was such a habit that I was keeping myself depressed because that was the only way I knew how to exist.

I have been BETTER for the past few years, because of cognitive behavioral therapy, but I was not depression free. It is like if depression had been a fever then I had a 104 degree fever for nearly 50 years, but over the past 4 years or so I’ve had a 100 degree temp. I have been better, but I still felt the presence of depression. If Depression were a color I was Navy Blue for 50 years, and sort of a bruised blue for the last 4 years. I continued to see my shrink every other week, because that activity enabled me to at least be a functioning depressant.

Something has changed. I’m not sure what changed, but there is no doubt that within me something has changed. I am different. I noted two things happened about the time I started feeling better. I started taking Deplin, and I wrote a description of what I thought a depression free life would be like.

First let me comment on the Deplin. What I understand is that one of the B vitamins needed by everyone is Folate. We get Folate from our diet, IF we obeyed mama and ate our green vegetables. Of course many of us do not eat enough green vegetables to ingest a therapeutic dose of Folate, so, to get this essential vitamin into our body without eating a pound of broccoli per meal, some of us take the man made form of Folate that comes in a little tablet called Folic Acid. Researchers found out that before our body benefits from this folic acid the vitamin must be broken down using a 4 step process.

Folate is chemically created as Folic Acid which breaks down into
Dihydrofolate, which then breaks down into
Tetrahydrofolate, and this is finally broken down into
L-Methylfolate.

The tablet Deplin is L Methylfolate.

The literature on Deplin claims that some people have a compromised ability to break down folic acid . Researchers further claim that about 70% of depressed people have this compromised ability to turn folic acid into L-Methylfolate. With Deplin, it doesn’t matter if the patient can or can’t bread down Folate, because when you ingest L-Methylfolate the body can use it immediately.

With Deplin not only do we benefit from ingesting this purest form of Folate, we also benefit from this L-Methylfolate because it is concentrated. Deplin makes a lot more of the useful supplement available to you. Remember, one 7.5mg Deplin tablet provides the bio-equivalent L-Methylfolate of 66 (800mcg) folic acid tablets.

I started taking Deplin about a month ago. My therapist added Deplin to the antidepressant cocktail I’ve been taking for several; years.

When the Deplin was suggested to me, and when I learned that it was a form of vitamin supplement, I was polite and said I’d try it, but in my mind I expected nothing to happen. Deplin is a purified vitamin! For most of my life I have considered vitamins as a way to produce very expensive brightly colored urine.

Remember all the wild claims made for ingesting mega doses of vitamin C, back in the day?. I remember hearing that if you took mega doses of vitamin C you could cure cancer and improve your ability to play the piano. That seemed crazy to me. After a month, something changed in me. I've been depressed for most of my life, around 55 years or so, and I have been taking meds and using talk therapy since 1980, and I figured I would live depressed until I died depressed. I did not believe anything was going to fix me. Something has happened after being a month on Deplin. I would not say I am giddy, I do not feel I have my life under control, but I am no longer worried, fearful, hopeless. I still have all the problems I've always had, including a traumatic childhood, but now I just feel I can cope. I may not know how I'm going to cope, but I sense that I will be able to cope. This change in me is not a thought, it is a feeling, but it is just barely a feeling. It is more like an unpleasant feeling gradually faded away, and I am just now noticing that it is gone. At first I thought it was a fluke. I thought, well, even a guy like me can have a good day once in a while. But one OK day followed the next OK day. I've been waiting for that other sad shoe to drop, I’ve been waiting for my sole to fall and it just hasn’t happened. . . repeatedly. This is the closest I have ever been to feeling as if I had an effective treatment for depression. Depression is like diabetes for me, you have it for the rest of your life, but with the right diet and meds you can live almost as if you didn't have it. Deplin just may be the I'm OK drug that brings my chronic depression under control.

No one expected this less than me. I am not happy. I am not joyful. I am not problem free. My life is still as flawed as the world around me. What is missing is worry, dread, and hopelessness. I don’t feel giddy, I’m not smiling all the time. The change is that I feel OK about being alive. I feel like I can cope with whatever happens next.

Have I just, finally fixed my thinking patterns? I don’t think it is that. I’m leaning toward the years of cognitive behavioral therapy, my psychotropic cocktail and the booster effects of Deplin. Obviously this is anecdotal evidence, and my experience is not a scientific conclusion. For the world of science the study must continue, but for me, well, all I can say is, I feel better.

Arizona's SHOW YOUR PAPERS Law

 
When watching coverage of the new immigration law passed in Arizona I watched Latino American’s coming up to the camera and saying that they were born in the US, they are US citizens and just because they look like many (not all) of the citizens of Mexico doesn’t mean they are not Natural Born Americans.

Sadly, I fear these people have missed the point. While there is a problem with illegal immigration and boarder Insecurity, the Arizona law is implying another more disturbing truth. The people who created the Arizona SHOW YOUR PAPERS law are not just against illegal immigrants, they are against people of color, all of them, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, even Native Americans.

The bill was authored by Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce, who has ties to J.T. Ready, an individual active in the neo-Nazi movement. This is not just gossip, there are pictures of Russell Pearce standing with people wearing brown shirts and with swastikas on their sleeves.

The people behind this bill have expressed white supremacist sentiments in past speeches and writing.

Another guy taking credit for the new law is Kris Kobach an attorney for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal arm of an immigration group called FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Here are some quotes from a FAIR spokesman, John Tanton:

To govern is to populate. Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night or will there be an explosion?

I've come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority and a clear one at that.

What is under the surface of the Arizona immigration law is racism. There is a segment of our country, perhaps a large segment, that not only wants to get rid of immigrants, but to get rid of all people of color, and some people who have faith in the wrong religion. If we all are not alarmed and outraged by the Arizona SHOW YOUR PAPERS law, then we are moving towards a society that will eventually resemble The Third Reich.

What would a depression free existence be like?

My shrink gave me homework. She does that a lot. It is one of the reasons I like going to see her. The task: describe what a depression-free like would be like. Maybe that would be a snap for you, but it was difficult for me. I’m 59 years old and I’ve been depressed most of those years. For me depression has become a habit, and maybe an addiction. I’ve been depressed for so long that I couldn’t imagine what life would be like if I was not depressed. It was like telling someone totally blind to describe what it would be like to have 20/20 vision. It may exist, but it was profoundly difficult to imagine.

Maybe, if I had a clear idea of the life I want, I would have a better chance at creating that life. To have a goal of a depression free life, isn’t it essential to have a clear idea of what that goal. It is always hard to hit a target, but it is impossible to hit a target you don’t even have. My target is to live without depression, but hitting that target is hindered by not having a target. Maybe if I knew what I wanted, maybe if I could clearly see the life I want, if I could imagine the life I want, then I could take actions, and make choices that would bring me closer to that depression free life.

Well, my homework is due tomorrow, so I had to come up with something, and I have something to turn in.

What would a depression free existence be like?

 I would be able to cope with injustice, unfairness, disappointment and misfortune. I would not want magic or luck to fix things. Coping would be all I wanted to do when facing the UNs in life.
 I would disengage from my fear of abandonment. I would not fear abandonment and know that I will be OK abandoned or not.
 Being an adaptive person would be enough for me to live a depression free contented life.
 Worry would be rare and short lived. When worry would seek my attention I would know that while I may not know how to cope at that moment, that I do have coping skills, I’ve gotten thorough stuff in the past and I can get through this now. I can accept uncertainty knowing that when it is needed a way to cope will be found.
 Conflict is uncomfortable, but I would know I can manage conflict and not worry about what other’s think.
 I would have activities that interest me, and give me a sense of completeness, or fulfillment. Examples: Painting, and writing.
 I would feel and believe I had a level of self-worth making it OK to have nice things, to pamper myself, to do things to maintain my health and appearance (not for others, but for myself).
 My good mood would always linked to my opinion of myself, and I would be in a good mood most of the time.
 When I feel insecure, or afraid, or anxious, or hurt, or rejected I will forgive myself, believe that everyone has these feelings from time to time, and If all humans have these feelings, and if I am human, then it is certain that I will have these feelings from time to time and that’s OK.
 My tendency to please would be balanced with habitual self protection safeguards.
 I would not seek to change people I have relationships with, and I’d be OK with that, knowing that the only person I can change is myself.
 I would understand the reason and merit of relationships