With the new year comes a prompt to reflect and take inventory on habits and aims. Sometimes it seems like my habits control me and that’s the easy way. Just follow the well trodden path of ‘used to” and I don’t have to think. My lesson for today tells me I am upset because I see a meaningless world. It is my application of meaning which determines good and bad.
Is artmaking good or bad? I imagine if I were painting while the children cried for supper it could be construed as bad. If I painted and avoided my responsibilities to my family it could be percieved as a negative act. How many of our most revered artists lived a life of solitary selfishness to the detriment of fellow travelers and we give them a pass because they came up with some exalted combination of notes or colors. Does the end justify the means?
For me I am concluding that it’s too late to make a change. I am concluding the drive to create art is not going away and that I can honor it in order to maintain a personal balance between self and service. I see it as a form of donning the oxygen mask first before helping the children.
In order to preserve the ability to maintain this balance I am going to have to sell some of this stuff. I can’t see a way to maintain storage and without the promise of sales it gets harder and harder to overcome the native resistance. So sales becomes a part of the process. Imagining a home for each work, a grateful patron.
There is a joy to creating. A timeless period of alignment with every artist who has lived , those alive today, and every creative act yet to come. That place of peace and excitement becomes embedded in the painting and offers the same sort of communion to the viewer. It never runs out or needs recharging. The paintings are emitting an opportunity, a ticket to a fellowship that lasts a lifetime. With one of these paintings on your wall you are part of an eternal brotherhood of art. From the cave paintings to the most unthought of future manifestations we join together to celebrate and honor the creative spark which illuminates even the darkest passages of human history.