The Truth About Honesty

On the surface, no one loves a liar.  Yet the world we live in is based on white
lies, grey lies, multicolored lies, and black-as-pitch lies.  We need these lies
in order to keep the wheels of commerce, domestic life, romance and even sex, to
keep us feeling in control and safe.  Everyone knows the 'How are you? - I'm
fine' lie.  There's the 'Do I look fat in this dress' lie, and the one that I'm
going to refer to in this article, the 'I'm painting what I love' lie.

I'm not suggesting that when someone tells you they love your painting, that
it's necessarily a lie.  Most likely it is not.  What I have learned in my life
as an artist is that people are infinite in their variety of personal
viewpoints, and that includes their taste in art.  It's all in the eye of the
beholder: we have all, as artists, come face to face with what we might consider
our dumbest, most poorly conceived and articulated painting, but someone
somewhere will love it.  They will read into it something of which you as the
artist have never dreamed.  Your psychology, your dream life, are shadows to
your work, because the only psychology and dream life that real matters, is that
of the viewer.  You might paint a tree or a blob, but the viewer sees something
you will never recognize as coming from you: something in their own mind's
universe.

That's why, in my opinion, painting to an audience is a waste of time.  Unless
there's money in it.  Then it's not a waste of time, but you do have to decide
what you want.  Money is nice.  Very nice.  We actually need it for the most
part.  But if you paint exclusively or even mostly for money, you're wasting
your life and your talent.

Flowers sell.  If you're Georgia O'Keefe, your flowers are more than pretty
images to hang above the sofa.  If you're O'Keefe, your flowers are doorways to
the soul, they are about sex, and promises, and fertility and blossoming and all
that good juicy dark beauty that dwells beyond the corners of your visual life.


But what if you're not seeking, questioning, exploring, like Georgia O'Keefe?
What if you're a person who chooses to paint flowers because most of the time, a
flower painting will be benign and acceptable and best of all, saleable, and will
not challenge the viewer in any way?

What if you're a landscape artist?  Or you like to paint cows?

My question is: where is your passion?  Is it about those things, or is it
because such paintings sell?  And when you're passionate, where are your
painterly limits?  Do you try to reach them or do you stay within the confines
of the visually and psychologically safe?  What's taboo?  How close and personal
do you want to get with your subjects?  Flowers, fruit, or people, can be
depicted in any number of ways, but it's all about limits of propriety and
limits of honesty.

Too proper and your own political correctness will promise a boring work of
questionable art.  Too honest, and people squirm.  Jurors often give the prize
to  a less emotionally challenging piece.  Corporations don't want to overtly
challenge their staff and businesses.  High end hotels want excellence,
opulence, and beauty.  Something distinctive but not too distracting and God
forbid, disturbing.  I understand that…I don't blame them.  They are playing to
the masses and they don't want to step on toes because there's no money in that.

Of course Frida Khalo told the truth.  Keith Haring told the truth.  Lucien
Freud tells the truth.  It might not be socially comfortable, but it's the
truth!  And the ugly truth can be very beautiful, desirable, and sometimes,
expensive.

Recently, speaking of honesty, I had a basal cell carcinoma on my face.  Thank
heavens it wasn't going to kill me, but I had to have about a third of my nose
removed.  I'm vain, so it was rough when the bandages came off and I saw what
was left of my nose and the disfigurement after reconstructive surgery.  After
10 months, my nose had 'settled' but it was far from the same nose.  It was
different.  Damaged.  Weird, and bulbous on one side from the enormous skin
graft.  I went for a second opinion, and won't bore you with the medical
details, but there was nothing to do but learn to love it.

My friends told me that no one cared, that no one noticed until I pointed it
out, because after all, it was my face not theirs, and I looked pretty decent
all in all.  It was just one side of my nose.

So to help me come to terms with my emotional frailty, my new nose, my new
damaged self image, I decided to do a series of self portraits in an unfamiliar
medium: watercolor.  I chose watercolor because it was very easy to get to,
always around, and not toxic.  I began the process.  I have never done self
portraits from photos before, usually opting for a mirror, but now I had an
iphone w a camera…so I took about a hundred photos in different poses, mostly
very similar, all extremely unflattering.

I did this because I wanted to capture all the wrinkles and folds, all the scar
tissue, all the sadness and lack of eye makeup, all the aging, all the truth,
about what was happening to me inside and out, and not just my nose, which was
dead central on my face, but the wars of life.  I wanted raw truth, like looking
into a magic pool where you could see truth reflected outside and looking all
the way in.


Seven paintings later I have a series, a week of frailty and self doubt.  I
posted it on my Facebook page. 

The responses barely trickled in.  One good friend sent me a desperate plea, to
get this off Facebook because I don't look like that.  Several people who I know
are fans as well as artists told me they liked the pieces a lot, but that I was
very hard on myself.  Others told me that they could see a little of me in each
one but that I was way more attractive.  The message I got was…uh…no.

Day #1 Self Portrait

Day #2 Self Portrait

Day #3 Self Portrait

Day #4 Self Portrait

Day #5 Self Portrait

Day #6 Self Portrait

Day #7 Self Portrait

My reaction to this is mixed.  In a way I wish they all loved it and I was
getting a ton of messages telling me they all want to give me a million dollars
for each and every one.

But my deeper reaction is one of elation.  Because I told the truth.  My
collectors, fans, and friends, well they may not be ready or willing to look and
to understand that what I did was paint a very personal, and yes, honest, essay
about vanity, sadness and acceptance.  This work does not declare, "I'm fine"
because I was not fine or I would never have painted this series.  I required
this process in order to be finer, if not yet completely fine.  And it has
worked.

Most people prefer to turn away from negativity, which is a bad, bad word in
social networking communities, not to mention galleries.  Cry and you cry
alone.  But sometimes, as an artist, as a fan of self expression, as a
communicator, if you don't tell the truth, you betray yourself and you betray
your audience and all the audiences to come.  And frankly, telling the truth is
a huge relief and a strong tie to a real transcendent beauty that you can never
ever achieve with a pretty and comforting lie.

Art for the Juror

Daniel

We all like happy happy.  It's easier to look at happy happy art because it doesn't challenge us, and who needs constant challenge?  Sometimes we just need to see something pretty.  Nothing wrong with that.

Years ago I spent a lot of time in Hawaii, near Kona.  The weather was always perfect.  There was nothing to complain about.  Every day was the same.  I really enjoyed it.  Really, really enjoyed it.  Beauty everywhere.

But I began to miss the seasons.  Hawaii's microcosmic and extravagant beauty couldn't stand up to the variety and extremes where my mind's eye wants my body to be. 

This is how I feel about art too.  I will whisper my secrets into the soul of the viewer, say something personal about me and you, create a record. 

Happy art is a good thing, as a good long stay in Hawaii can be a good thing.  But a steady diet of happy is a sure road to soul death, and art is about soul.  Art is about complete communication, a kind of oneness with the unknown.

An artist has an obligation to be a kind of explorer.  Someone who does a nice painting over and over and over again is not an explorer.  This is a person with a formula, and is stuck.

In order to break free and explore, an artist must allow himself to be unafraid of his own inner voice.  Is it a happy voice?  Fine.  Is it a pissed-off voice?  Fine too.  Sadness, misery, the gamut of emotion, they're there to excavate and reveal.

Some artists who are devastated by their personal circumstances take it all out on their art, and never see the inside of a psychiatrist's office.  Others pay for a shrink and produce pap…but pap sells.  There's a market for everything.

Here's what I wish: that I will be brave enough to be honest in my work.  When I'm happy, or feel pretty, I'll paint that, but when I'm not, when I'm depressed or scared, I'll paint that too.  I believe that if I can do that, the work will have a kind of integrity. 

Juried shows provide an artist with something to put on their resume, and to place at all in such a show is a prestigious feather in an artist's cap.  Jurors often view 'darkness' in a painting as a bad thing, and they avoid it like the plague.  Jurors generally like happy.

Take that as information, not advice.  Because my advice is, don't paint for the juror.  Paint for the invisible explorer that's in your own head, a person who is really your own inner voice, a part of you, and who will take whatever you produce and tell you, it's great, it's a museum-worthy piece.  Be brave.

Brave is the new pretty

Let It Go But Keep It Forever



One of the most important lessons any artist learns is, you must let your work go.  You have to let it go, if you want to eat.

Any parent knows you love your baby.  It's not quite the same with me in regards to my paintings, as I don't regard them as babies exactly, but they're part of my existential being.   Sometimes it's hard to let them go, even for money.

So I hit on a number of solutions.

First, I take a photo of the work.  Now I have a record.  Yay!

Next, I file it where I know I can find it again.  I keep 2 copies of this file.  One is in a digital form, as in a computer, and the other is in a transparency.  I put this in a little plastic box and label it by year.  I keep the little plastic box with other little plastic boxes in a small metal box, thinking maybe that'll keep it somewhat safe if there's ever a fire. In regards to the digital file, I also email the image to myself.  That way if there ever is a fire, I'll still have the image in cyberspace and can potentially retrieve it.

Grizzly Looking at You

Watercolor on paper. Original sold.

These are numbered & signed limited edition giclees with
various sizes available.

Next, I select certain painting images and send a digital image to my Giclee printer, who is an artist in his own right.  We work together to create a limited number of copies of the work, which, when I get the Giclees back, I will correct and embellish, and of course then number, and sign, by hand.

By creating a Giclee, I get to keep the original but sell the Giclee at a lower price than I would have to sell the original.   And of course I can sell the original at a much higher price point.

The Eye of the Beholder

My friend Pam, an excellent housekeeper with a penchant for perfection, hates the pots that hang in my kitchen.  My friend David, a photographer with an expert eye, thinks they're beautiful.

What's beautiful?  I like the pots.  They're beaten up, have been instruments of deliciousness and a few disasters, and are impossible to scrub back to their shiny newness. I don't hide them in a cabinet mainly because they wouldn't be so conveniently within reach.

Oh…and I don't have the cabinet space.  So I use a pot rack.

And notice the pot rack.  It's a piece of pipe from the hardware store.  It takes up very little physical space and it cost around $10.  The hooks add to the cost but not significantly.

Is this a slick and sophisticated, magazine-worthy look?  Perhaps not. But it's a comforting look.  It's honest.  There is an integrity not present in a high end design.

What do you think?

Flame Poppy

24 x 36, watercolor

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Truth No Matter What

My Mother Stephany Garfield

 2'9" by 3', oil on canvas cloth

The main thing is, writers write, artists paint or sculpt or scream into the void with the work they do, whatever it is.  If creatives don't create, if all they do is marinate, think about their creations-to-be, then what are they?

To be true to yourself and live a meaningful life, you really do have to make certain choices.  I choose to use my voice in any way I can, to say whatever it is I’m trying to say, and I don't always know what that is.  Nothing is out of bounds for the artist.  All of us speak from somewhere inside and we don't always know what we're saying, until after we said it, and often not even then.

Stephany at Winnipeg Beach

3' by 5', oil on canvas

But it's not important that we know on a conscious level.  It's important only that we say it, and then move on to the next unformed or perfectly formed thought, because art is confusing and complicated, even if it looks simple.  Art is a mirror of the soul, and I don't know what a soul really is.  Art is neither good or bad, but if it's art, it's honest.

Everything Falls Away
In life, people we love are faced with mortality in a public sort of way.  It's inevitable.  When my mother grew old, she often reminded me of a withering flower.  Every time I looked at her, I saw a flower growing older and older and older, more fragile, thinner, but no less beautiful.

She lived with me and my family for the last 19 years of her life, and little things began to go. First her hearing, which I realized when she accused me of speaking softer on purpose so that Icould more easily aggravate her.  Then her eyes, when she could no longer read the books she enjoyed.  Her sense of direction deserted her.  She began having minor car accidents.  She got lost driving home from the grocery store.  We had to separate her from her car keys. At last, when she discovered that the computer class she had signed up for was beyond her, some hope in her mind quietly folded up for good..

That one was painful for both of us.  It was the moment that I realized a corner had been turned.  It was the first really tangible proof that mortality was stalking her and would catch her one day.

The complexity of accepting mortality is universal to humans, of course.  We all know what the future holds and we approach it in our individual ways, and for most of our lives, these ways are private.

But at the end, many of us go to hospitals, where we are subjected to the loss of the rest of us, except for what's left of our used-up bodies and too often, our dignity.  When we enter a hospital for the last time, the last thing that falls away from us, is ourselves.

As I walked my mother to the car for what would turn out to be her final trip to the hospital, she must have had a sense that she wasn't coming home.  She turned to me and said, "Don't worry darling.  I'm not scared to die: it's nature."  As the significance of the generosity in this statement hit me hard enough to make my head spin, she added, "You can spend the interest. But don't spend the principal."

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In The Spirit Of Full Disclosure!

Captain Of My Soul

In the spirit of full disclosure, let me present myself as an addict.  I'm addicted to several things: interaction with others, art, and physical exertion.  I could probably include food in that group but it may not be completely true, because I don't live to eat; I eat to live. 


For the rest of it, I live to communicate, to paint, and to run. Painting is a solitary process.  I do it surrounded by the cacophony of three boys, two dogs, and a cat.  I'm a single mom, spread too thin, and hungry for beauty.

My Three Loves

Beauty is everywhere though.  My gorgeous boys of course; Brainiac, 16, and the twins Thing One and Thing Two.  They're my partners in crime and I live to cook for them and drive them all over the universe in support of their eventual self-actualization.

Henry and Toby

The dogs are Henry, a long-suffering eleven-year-old English lab, and Toby, affectionately referred to as The Urinator, a recently rescued seven-year-old miniature Dachshund. 

Morris The Healer

The cat, Morris, is a perpetually relaxed orange tabby who purrs so well that I believe he's a healer.

Lake House

Together we live in a lake-front Victorian house in an idyllic village near a large metropolitan area.  My neighbors are awesome and friendly.  The children attend public schools where the teachers are dedicated and stay in touch. There's a grocer within a half mile, a public library within a mile, and the shops and restaurants are literally across the street.  I drive a Prius because I care about the planet and because gas today costs about $3.15 a gallon.

Our house is grand central station to every boy in the neighborhood, and because the children's father is a Santa Claus dad who doesn't live locally, my children have been gifted with every electronic toy on the planet.  They get to huddle in the basement playing XBox and whatever else they have down there, and I get to escape.

My Art Studio

Let me introduce you to my studio.  When I bought this house, there was no garage.  I had a garage built in the empty lot next to my house. 

Winding Way

Because of the steep grade facing the lake, I arranged for the garage to have two stories…the main floor houses a two car garage.  Below, facing the lake, boasting French doors and some windows, is my studio.  It's unheated, uninsulated, the walls are cinder block, but it's space, and it's a work in progress.

For days when it's too cold to go in there, I paint on a table in my bedroom.  I tape a piece of paper to a table and use watercolor (mostly).  The pieces that come from this process are usually very detailed.  The process is Zen-like and meditative. So is running.  Both painting and running bring me a certain kind of peace. And although both are solitary in that you have to do them alone, they are both ways of communicating.  


Through painting, I get to use my eyes and mind to truly see, and in creating a vision on canvas or paper, I get to communicate this to a viewer, who participates through viewing.  Through running, I get to feel alive and connected to the earth beneath my feet and to my breath and the wind.  I sometimes run in packs, with others whom I know are connecting with their life force in the same way I connect with mine, and this is a form of wordless communication.

Night Koi

Golden Light Art Conversations & Gallery is a way to draw you, the viewer, into my little corner of heaven.  For a communication addict like me, this is my ultimate pleasure.