Before our basement flooded, I had been working on another Columbia Art League challenge. In fact, the flood gave me a needed break from it. I had been struggling fulfilling the brief for “Lush,” a group exhibit celebrating the richness and vitality of our natural world. This would seem to be a perfect fit for me, but it just wasn’t happening.
After the week of cleaning and doing, I got back to work on painting. I produced many terrible things, several of them on the same hapless wood panel, and others on paper. Rubbish, the British artists I follow would say. A dog’s breakfast. Destined for “the bin” or “the fire.” I grew to hate the substrate itself. I longed for this mythical “fire” of which they speak. What fire? Do they have one going at all times? Perhaps an axe would be satisfying? At the moment it sits with its face to the wall, poor thing. I had even varnished, photographed, and entered it, just to end my misery.
But I found two recent paintings that I love that fit the theme and that I deemed worthy of submitting. So I put a wire on the back of one, popped the other into a frame, and Bob’s your uncle (as the Brits would say)! Ahh. Sigh of relief. But you know, it may be that the piece I hated would have been loved by the juror or a buyer. Such is the eye of the beholder. Had the juror been myopic or unbeknownst to her, missing one lens of her glasses, my Blue Fence II might even have won a prize! One never knows. And in this case, one will never know, because Blue Fence II will never see the light of day.
So now the craziness is over and I am moving on. How could it be so hard for someone who truly does love our natural world to represent it in a meaningful or beautiful way? Well, a) I find the doing of representational art tedious and b) I honestly don’t feel equal to the task of portraying the gorgeousness of nature. I much prefer working from my imagination, and letting surprises happen. I was trying to render heaps of flowers in an exuberant, colorful, abstract sort of way. But no. The magic refused to happen.
The artist herself needs to feel proud of what she shows to the world. It doesn’t matter one whit whether the judge is recovering from cataract surgery. So that’s that. Another submission under the belt. (I’m tempted here to digress on that expression, but I feel that I’ve kept you long enough.)
“To require perfection is to invite paralysis.” ― David Bayles, Art and Fear
“She wasn’t exactly sure what Lord Waverly saw in her work, but that was the beauty of art. Everyone saw something a little different.” ― Laura Rollins, A Pocket of Stars
“To the artist, all problems of art appear uniquely personal. Well, that’s understandable enough, given that not many other activities routinely call one’s basic self-worth into question.” ― David Bayles, Art and Fear
If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. If you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.
Thanks for listening,
Kay
P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”