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.
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| Day #1 Self Portrait |
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| Day #2 Self Portrait |
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| Day #3 Self Portrait |
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| Day #4 Self Portrait |
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| Day #5 Self Portrait |
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| Day #6 Self Portrait |
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| 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.
