Perhaps there are artists who laugh the whole time they work and who are satisfied with everything they do. While I am mostly 'in the zone,' concentrated, focused, busy doing and undoing, wrecking and saving, there is always a moment when I cry. Anguish. It might be before I begin. Or after I've ended. But usually during schisms during.
I'm in the flight or fight syndrome when I paint. I want to run from the image I am fighting to create. I only stop what surely is a sort of madness, painting, by deciding something is finished when I 'can live with it.' And yet my images clearly don't reflect the pain they have caused me.
People who don't create art don't perhaps understand what you go through as you wait for the moment when your painting, or your sculpture, or your composition sings to you.
Until it sings to you, you have to keep going or give up.
Lately I'm simply making, without being serious. I'm doing pieces that are not part of any project. Mostly I am aghast at what's emerged. It's better to have a direction, to know what it is you want to do. To have a thesis.
Yes, even in paint. A thesis is not a direction exactly. Not in the way I am using it. But an overall 'reason for being' perhaps.
Just doing for the sake of doing doesn't do anything.
Unless you make the 'doing for the sake of doing' the raison d'etre, that is!
i know this feeling, in the 'after' of art: a mourning. and during, too - enduring the schisms becoming shape, enduring.
ReplyDeleteand a thesis, yes, i never thought of it this way. but yes, a thesis -not to answer questions, but to expose them.
i was reminded of one of rilke's 'theses' as i read your words dancing with paint, and would like to share it with you:
Dancer, O you translation
of all transcience into steps. How
sparkling clear!
That culminating spin, that tree
of motion,
didn't you wholly seize the
turning year?
Didn't it bloom so your deft feet
might swarm
around it, burst and blossom
into calm?
Wasn't thesun, summer - those
immeasurably warm
days - drawn from your warm
inner balm?
But it bore fruit, it bore your
tree of ecstasy.
Everything in season. Tranquil. The
urn
is streaked with ripeness, too.
Through the pictures, the drawing,
can't we see
an obscure stroke shaping an
eyebrow
quickly scrawled on the wall?
The dancer's turn?
A mourning, and an enduring, yes I well understand these. Yet I would love you to elaborate. And a thesis, not to answer questions, but to expose them, wow, wow. Yes!
ReplyDeleteI have read the Rilke poem a dozen times, loving it more each time.
Thank you, "d."