Why I Paint
A little while back someone near to me told me why I make art, and it was so off-base that I really had to spend some time thinking about it. What comes to mind first, are all the reasons I do not make art. I do not make art for recognition, praise, money, or fame. If I made it for any of these reasons I would have quit decades ago, because I’ve had almost entirely zero of any of these. Also, I do not make art because I think I am any good at it. I believe most decent artists will tell you that excellence is an ever-moving target which is part of the masochism of the whole thing.
I can remember almost down to the minute when I fell in love with oil painting. I mean that, “in love”. It was that. And it was a strange thing because I had previously taken oil painting in high school, which I mostly remember as a turpentine haze from which I had to stumble outside and lie down on the grass. In those days I thought you had to wear black and smoke in order to make art, but I was always doing it in my own way (dance, music, fiber arts). Luckily at age 21 I took a painting class at College of the Atlantic and I was in a very open state, looking for something that would express all of the world that was flowing through me. Johann Carpenter talked to us as if we were exceptional painters, all going on to get our masters at Yale. There was a great rapport in the group. And the paint… the paint was like this buttery, vibrant color that you could eat with your eyes. Just mixing it was rapturous. Whatever your medium is, you must feel this deep connection with it: the beauty of a sable brush, the feel of the wood in the block you carve into, how liquid flows onto paper. I deeply love the tools and materials I work with and feel their energy flowing in my hands. I feel how they have their being and their own things that they are communicating.
That was a long time ago. I think almost anyone who were to experience what I have, would have moved on to other things: my chemical sensitivity in the art school environment and the consequent failure of my body, the incredible cost, the failure to find more than one or two good teachers and mentors, the mediocrity of my own skill, the demands of family and relationships and the lack of encouragement from almost anyone. What keeps me making the stuff? The nearest I can tell, it has to do with brain chemistry. I like the flow state my brain goes into when making art. I like it so very much you could say it is addictive. The more time I spend in that state, the less I want to do anything else. That doesn’t mean it’s easy; it never is and I have many torments. And then when I have been working very hard at it, the world rewards me. I can finally see into the tremendous beauty of everything. My entire visual field comes alive. I can take the awful dross of everyday life and make it into gold. I can make meaning out of everything around me and within me and life is palatable.
Recently I heard a discussion on a podcast about what indigenous societies have to say about the purpose of the human in the world. One purpose was to sing of the beauty of the world. That is what I try to do, in my own cracked voice. My love for the planet is immense and art is really the most fluent way I have to express it. It is like my love for my children; all I can really do with that love is hold them, watch them, listen to them. There is a certain futility in both, and simplicity. It seems that that is all I have.