Tuesday, May 5, 2015

A Statement, of Sorts...

The Conversation of Art - 

I had my first conscious museum experience (at the MFA in Houston) relatively late in life, at about age 23.  As I walked through, delighting in the color, images and shifting time, I saw everything but heard nothing; it was a purely visual experience.  I can’t explain why, but something inside compelled me to repeat this exercise; to tramp through dozens of other museums during the years that followed.  In the silence, my eyes took it all in.

Gradually, I could recognize a few of the artists by just the look of their paintings.  “Oh, hello, I know you,” I would think to myself as I crossed the room, beaming as if recognizing an old friend.  “So this is what you were up to since we last met - I see what you were thinking about!”  

I was starting to hear some whispers. 

Visits to libraries and bookstores turned up the volume.  Combing through reference books, I found the stories.  I was shocked by Frida’s terrible accident, and understood Vincent’s lonely wandering.  I wept when I read about Henri’s defiance of his deformity, and was impressed by Andy’s calculated preemptive strike.

When my children arrived, I took them along, and engaged them with what I had learned.  “See that painting, with all of the blue in it?  Pablo was sad because his friend had just died when he made it,” I would say.

And the paintings began talking back.

“You’re damn right I was sad then,” I could have sworn I heard the work reply.  “But look, there - at that hint of rose - and the eyes, which look like masks; can you tell that I am starting to think differently, Catherine?” My chin would bob with understanding.

And while this conversation was going on, tiny drips of art started leaking out of me.  Painting a flat for a school play, doodling in the margins of my life, or making ridiculously complex Halloween costumes, my own creative juices began to flow.

Squeezing out some time, I took drawing, painting and design classes, and thought a lot about art, searching for a way, for permission really, to join in the conversation.  

Then, at 51, with only rudimentary art or computer skills, I made the decision to publicly commit myself to learn to paint, by making 52 paintings in a year and posting them on a blog.  Vincent van Gogh and I spent a year together, and he taught me to see and think like an artist.  He told me his story, and I told him mine (http://vincentprojectblog.com).  He told me to make art, even if no one believed in it or me.

Although I would have described myself as a very private “shame-driven” type of person, I dove in without any clue about how to do even simple tasks, like taking a screen shot.  (And, so you know, I have not changed or cleaned up a word of the Vincent Project blog since I initially published it.) I suffered the humiliation of my (now adult) tech-savvy kids rolling their eyes (in their own embarrassment) at how little I knew about using a computer.

Without much culling or careful curation of my images, I taught myself to blog, and published paintings in every stage of development, including ones that were truly awful.  I got almost no feedback (except halting “Oh, that’s interesting…” conversational dismissals) until I was well more than halfway through the project.  

Unexpectedly, I sold my house, had a major estate sale, remodeled a loft apartment and moved in the middle of that year; during that upheaval, I painted and (admittedly, later than I wanted to) published.  I continued to announce every new posting on social media and provided links, and I pursued every glimmer of interest with friends, strangers, stalkers and some who I believe must be in the Russian mob.  

I completed 52 paintings within 52 weeks, and wrote about them all.  Then I did the bravest thing of all.  I kept on painting, even though it would have been so easy to embrace the hobby and just paint on Sundays.  

There were more courses, this time in Art History. 

I was finding that he more I understood the language, the more cacophonous the museums became.  As I passed from gallery to gallery, I could hear the artists hailing one another, teasing one another, paying tribute to those who had come before. I started to catch on to the amusing inside jokes (that I felt) they had inserted for my enjoyment.  I saw images repeated and reinterpreted over and over - Millet to van Gogh, Goya to Manet, Kahlo to Morimura; I was beginning to understand a lot of what they were saying, and even some of what had been left unsaid.

In the studio space I had carved out for myself, I started hearing the soft cadence of my own voice tentatively joining the chorus.  Jackson guided my drips, until Lee told him to shut the hell up and let me do it.  Henri’s hands folded over my own in the scissors, until the confidence of my cuts allowed him to let me go. Through my own practice, I found myself simultaneously looking backward, forward and standing in place; I was leaving behind the mark of my  own life through the objects I had made.

I think about and make art each and every day simply because I am seeking greater fluency in the subject.  I want to practice speaking until I can conjugate the verbs, perfect the tenses, and converse like a native.

The art which has leaked out of me all of my life is now a steady flow, and I will never allow that faucet to be turned off, by anyone or anything.  I want to grow as an artist, both technically, and with a more refined communication of my thoughts, ideas and responses.  I want to expand the dialogue I am engaged in via actual, interactive conversation and collaboration with other artists.  I hope that my art will continue to be recognized and collected.

Ultimately, I want to continue in the ongoing and timeless conversation.  I want my art to whisper or shout as it tells my own story.  I want someone in the next century to joyfully cross a gallery just to say - “Oh, hello, I know you.”