In this time of “great pause,” I am seeing a flourishing of creativity. People are responding to the pandemic in innovative ways. I am suddenly seeing all kinds of new models for cultural production.
As artists, we get this incredible opportunity to bear witness to all that we see and experience in our lives, and to give thanks for being alive and able to experience it.
I continue to strive for a way to make my body of work more cohesive without sacrificing my ability to work in multiple media and techniques.
As I paint, the image is a living, mutable thing, and sometimes it reveals the answers to the questions it asks.
You have to show up—to the class, to the studio, to the openings, to life, because, at the time you may or may not know it, your artistic eye is keeping records of everything you see. You just can’t help but to absorb life, after it percolates and rises to the surface, you want brushes in your hand.
I look through my sketch books to uncover ideas and images that stimulated me but which I didn’t flesh out at the time. This recalls me to myself and my sensibilities which often jump-starts new work.
It’s easy to come up with the idea. The work comes in the actual execution of the idea and then doing it all over again, while at the same time striving to improve skills, so that every successive image is better than the last.
I feel with this current world crisis that social media has opened new venues to seize some power in our potency as creators rather than wait for the establishment to shed light on us.
I did not go to art school, so maybe there are many things I could have learned. But I have given up worrying about them.
The one thing no art school can prepare a student for… was the wonder of living in a solitary world of one’s own creation, the intensity of that experience, and that connection that waits in the work if you persist.