That Dress

I have a big relationship with my paintings. Each one is not only a story but it is a part of my reason for living.  Maybe if I talk about the origin of my drive , it will be more meaningful for anyone out there who might suffer the same thing.

Even though my life was very wonderful growing up in many respects there was one thing that was not drilled into me. The feeling that somehow being feminine was somehow not as important as being masculine was something I picked up indirectly and have been fighting it ever since. I can remember being in first grade and being so afraid to bring a purse to school that I carried a cosmetic bag instead. In my first grade mind that was non feminine.

It just seemed too vulnerable.  It wasn’t that I did not like those things , I just felt like it would make me weak.

Now after all this time of painting women, the most pink and feminine paintings are my greatest effort to face that fear. They are the ones that are my fiercest fighters in this personal mission to appreciate this part of me.

The ability to be vulnerable when doing art is the most important aspect of it.

When you look at this painting,  you might feel this  on a visceral level  . This might be a universal struggle. If you don’t like it , it might be for the same reason.  Pink is hard to handle. It is the opposite of fluffy emotions. It is a hard core fight to be vulnerable. But without that , whats the point of even doing art?

Abstract Art

Art that has images in it that you can recognize is like a lot of words on a page. You understand it and can relate to the piece on a level that is talkable.

But totally abstract works are created on a different level. They are non wordable. They are like ink being dropped into clear water. the ink makes all the wordable aspects of the work opaque. You are left with the ink color which speaks to a different part of your brain, the place where dreams come from , where feelings come from, where devotion comes from.

Artists are people who are processing their own lives and then in turn help everyone else to process theirs too.

 

What is the most valuable thing in your house

If your house caught on fire, what would you grab first  . I would run around madly taking all the art out. I cannot replace the art. Everything else is just something you can buy. Your 4000 couch… let it burn, the photos you better have on the cloud so you don’t need to worry about them. Everything else let it burn, The most expensive things in your house should be the art. Nothing is like art in that way.

There are plenty of stories of art being saved in wars . I was thinking about this, It wasn’t just the monetary value of the work. There is something different about art that is universal.  It is not just decoration. It is so much more than that.

 

error: Please do not copy.