These paintings are hot to me. The bristle with a subtle energy that is easy to lose oneself in. The top painting is still pretty wet, but the bottom is ready for a glaze. I'm at a point that I have to get these paintings off the floor and stored somewhere. I am running out of room and afraid I may step or trip on one (I'm clumsy, what can I say).
I'm uncomfortable with telling people I'm an "artist," sometimes. Not because I am in the least way self-conscious about what I do, but rather because I prefer to think about my artistic practice as something I do and not something I am; something that defines me by role or persona. I like the work. I like doing the work, logging the hours in the studio and seeing these things transpire. People who meet me tell me I don't look like an artist, and I confess this doesn't bother me anymore. I am in some ways my own foil to my work. I don't care about those things anymore, I just want to get this work out there. It needs to be in front of people, that, I feel, is my responsibility to it. How to best do that eludes me.
I'm good at the making. I'm good at the work. I am horribly inept at the business end; the promotion, the marketing, all that. I know it's important. I know it's part of it, but in the end it isn't resistance to the validity or necessity of doing those things that impedes me; it is simply that I don't seem to be wired for it.
I'm taking tonight off to go see baseball. Man does not live by art alone.
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