Friday, October 14, 2011

The search for authenticity


And then you get and artist
says he doesn't want to paint at all
He takes an empty canvas

sticks it on the wall

Mark Knopfler
In the Gallery


Behind the scenes, pretty much constantly as I watch the stuff that appears on the canvas of my mind and on the easel in front of me lurks the inevitable question, "Is this Art?"

This leads to the next question, "What is Art?" and waiting in the queue just behind that one is "What is art to me?"

I'll confess that I've never really resolved any of these questions. Mostly I dance around a sort of central pole that I sense but don't fully grasp, but a few days ago some of the mist cleared when I realised that my obsession with marks as they land on the canvas is a quest for something authentic. This doesn't take me very far because immediately the next question pops up, "What's authentic?"

What Mark was complaining about in his song quoted above was that the passion of his hero Harry, who "made a bareback rider, proud and free on a horse" was dismissed by the hip art crowd in favour of clever statements like hanging a blank canvas on the wall and calling it art.

So is cleverness authentic art? Could be. I guess.

But then investment banksters are also clever. In fact it could be argued that their diabolically clever manipulation of our lives via the money system is as much art as Damien Hirst's provocatively clever manipulation of our sensitivities with his sheep in formaldehyde or rotting barbecue.

Perhaps Art then is what you can get away with. After all a con artist is still called an artist.

However that may play out, one thing's clear - I'm not in the con business. Between the need to communicate with an audience and the sometimes errant meanderings of my mind there's a wobbly line that defines a common perception of value. The elasticity of that line has often surprised me as I veered closer to my own brand of madness than seemed safe, only to find an enthusiastic reception in the people passing by. Or at least some of them.

So bolstered by this knowledge I now find myself playing with something I don't even really understand. If I look at this current piece objectively I must admit that it flirts dangerously with a terrible cliche, the raven haired voluptuous beauty. I guess I'm attempting the opposite of cleverness, allowing whatever arises to arise and dealing with the fallout later.

So is it art? Mmmm.

The only thing that's clear to me is that I'd like the strokes that land on it to have the honesty of living their lives much as they were born. Some will pretty, some ugly but interesting. Those who are neither get dissed and scrubbed into the chorus line. More marks will land later and slowly build up a song amongst themselves.

As for the overall impact of the piece as it progresses, I'm willing to keep pushing paint around and wait to see if the story that eventually emerges is of value.

In the meantime another Tall Story is slowly approaching that mysterious central pole. I pushed some more paint around this week and found some resolution to the lack of integration that has been its big issue since the start. It's been a rather difficult child with a 6 month labour so far but as I look at it now I begin to think it might just turn out to be a favorite one.

Also meanwhile, two other children are looking for re-incarnation, both of them revisits of much earlier pieces that I've been wanting to explore again. This one's currently called Water Phoenix but that could change. Here's the digital thought form. I'm thinking of making it nice and big.

It's a development of the 4th piece I did when this painting lark began, when I knew that I wanted to work loose and free but didn't know how to yet, and settled for painfully careful.

The other revisit I'm thinking of also harks back to the early universe - Beach House, and again I want to go big, currently thinking 180x120cm. Even bigger would be even nicer but there's a limit on what I can move around the world, and that's it. Here's the original digitally manipulated as a guide.

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