Thursday, October 22, 2015

Autumn Thoughts

The fall moves in slowly in Chicago. Leaves reluctantly depart from trees and form crisp carpets of gold beneath our feet. The days grow shorter, and everyone rushes to enjoy the last rays of sunshine each day. They know that winter comes too soon.

This should be the best time for painting, when the weather is still between freezing and boiling. But I cannot produce anything. I don't know why. This slow silent fatigue that sits upon my brain and freezes my hands. Projects left stillborn, sculptures left to dry into jagged forms, unfinished and unsmoothed.

I started a new job at the end of September, and have even less time in my day. Up at 7 a.m. Arrive at work by 8:30 a.m. Leave the desk at 5 p.m. for an hour of traffic. Arrive at home by 6 p.m. 11 hours of the day gone. 13 hours remaining. Subtract 7 hours for sleep and 6 hours remain for everything else - eating, working out, people. And art. But often there is no time for art.

I find myself besieged by guilt as I struggle to find the willpower to make it to the studio. Most nights I wile away the hours on online news, social media feeds, and then the occasional correspondence with friends.

Then last night I met up with a female artist friend, who is unfortunately moving away to the West Coast. She is fairly well established in the art world, and is on a hiatus from painting while she focuses on her health. We spent several hours talking about the state of the art world, and about what it means to create art of substance. A focus on a single theme/thesis seems to be the most important element according to her, to which I agree.

But we also talked about the evolution of an artistic life, how it's not simply restricted to making "art." I feel that you can experience so much within the mental realm and not translate any of it into "art" for it to still exist. How many souls have lived and departed this earth without leaving anything behind? Yet their minds processed all the things we saw. A sunset. A lover's sleeping face. A child's cherubic hands. A dead animal. These impressions brushing up against their mental framework - crashing like waves against their subconscious and consciousness.

Lately, I've been finding myself draw to psychology, to maybe becoming a therapist. In some ways, everything starts in the mind. It's where we all begin. A thought illuminates the darkness within our primordial minds. A thought that persists through the ebbs and flows of life. A thought that blossoms into new forms. A therapist is privy to so many thoughts. The therapist helps the client organize his/her thoughts, discarding those that no longer serve a positive purpose, creating new ones to build a bridge to goals.

A therapist is like a mirror held up to your face to help you examine yourself. Yet it is also a two way mirror, for the therapist also examines him/herself in the same process. Like two reflections of the same but different. I think this is the same as art. Like a mirror for the viewer and the artist. The artist reaches through the mirror to the viewer. And the viewer's potential thoughts reaching through the mirror to the artist. The art is the permeable membrane that stretches between the two.

So in many ways therapy is the same as art. Like a bridge or portal between two worlds, through which transformations occur. This is why art exists on a separate plane. It exists in the plane between worlds. It is the catalyst for change as well as the distillation of thoughts.

In this way, commerce and business run perpendicular to art's call to existence. Commerce bases its direction upon the clients' needs. It capitalizes upon providing solutions for customers to generate sales. Therefore, a product is designed with an existing problem in mind, and can only succeed if it is meeting a need that already exists. Art also emerges from a need, but it is a need that is first generated in the artist's mind, outside of the viewer's gaze. However, there is a collective consciousness into which the artist taps, which generates the bridge between the collective and individual consciousness. In a way, an artist is speaking what the collective feels unconsciously, and is the medium through which the collective unconsciousness is manifested.

But unlike commerce, an artist must perceive the societal problem first and believe in the necessity of the art work even if it is rejected by society. In this way, an artist the opposite of an entrepreneur, who adapts and changes his/her product until it is suitable to the public. Inventors are similar to artists in the creation of their design and innovation. But the transition of innovation to adaptive use also means the transformation of art/innovation into product/commerce.

I worry often about the transformation of art into commerce precisely for the same reasons. When an artist first conceives of an idea, the innovative aspects of the artwork is the generator of energy for the creative process. However, once an artist creates the art work, he/she has to find not only a viewer to whom they can connect, but also a client to whom he/she can sell the work. Just because the connection exists does not necessarily mean the purchase of a piece of art. This is why the gallery system exists - to provide the commercial adaptation of art into a product.

*More to come later...

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