ideas

It's a funny thing about ideas, I mean how important are they to the success of a painting?

Yikes, that's a question.

I was thinking the other day (uh oh) that I used to have more ideas than I do now, partly because when you're young you're trying out new possibilities and as you get older I think you start to realize that a lot of the possibilities you think about just won't work.

You have gained eggs-perience.

But I remember having a million of ideas. It makes me wonder what I would have painted if I was painting then.

But that's water under the bridge, doesn't pay to think about that too much.

I was reading an article in Modern Painters magazine recently about the big show in Amsterdam, the Caravaggio-Rembrandt To-Do. The author said that after looking at the paintings she felt that really the most unimportant part of the whole thing was the subject matter, that these paintings were GOOD no matter what the people in the paintings were all about. I think that's what she was saying and I think she's right about that.

And you can imagine that Rembrandt probably spent hours thinking of a particular subject matter to paint, that he went through many different options before settling on Samson and Delilah say.

And that the subject matter is in many ways the "idea" of a painting. You can hear Leonardo Da Vinci now saying to himself, hmmm, I'll take this Madonna and I'll paint her half-length and I'll put her in an insipid landscape. Maybe I'll have her smiling enigimatically.

Or you can hear Picasso saying to himself, "Pablo, you're the best! And that idea you had about putting some prostitutes in a painting with masks on them and I'll put them in a circle, with grapes on a table in front, that is something to pursue!"

I mean, that's how a painter gets started, thinking about his subject matter coming up with ideas.

But maybe there are ideas and there are ideas. Ideas that are more important to the success of the painting and ideas that are less important.

Perhaps the most important idea when it comes to producing a great painting is to have an idea as to the way the painter connects to the world, has compassion for the world and loves the world, and in particular the idea of how the painter uses that connected self to portray the world.

That's a pretty good idea.

And perhaps this "idea" is not really in the form of a traditional subject matter idea, one that is thought about, reasoned about and then acted upon.

But maybe it is. Maybe that's what makes great painters great.

You just wonder if a painter's greatness is something he/she thinks about or is it something that is just there. I can understand that Rembrandt could've painted ANYTHING and it would have been great, but did he know that?

I think that the great painters do know that, that they come to understand that what they paint isn't as important as how they paint and make an effort (have an idea) to do art in a particular way.

You look at a guy like Andy Warhol where the idea of the painting seems so important to the painting, the Campbell's Soup Cans for instance. The idea of the soup cans is brilliant, the BEST, but more importantly he had the idea to think about the world in a different compassionate loving way, a way that would connect with his audience in his era.

As I mentioned, Rembrandt probably DID stay up nights thinking of ideas to paint, and you can't disassociate that from the process that led from A to Masterpiece. But I think that the great painters had an idea about what they were doing and how they did it that they knew was more important than what they painted.

So the next time you (or me) starts to worry about that, about WHAT you're going to paint, just remember that your process can be just as good as Rembrandt's if you can manage to live in the world, and love the world and have an idea to show that love and compassion in whatever subject matter you choose.

What to concentrate on

First let me say that I think this feeling you get when you try to do art, this feeling of frustration if things aren't going well, the sorta riled up-ness you get as you try to work things out, the disgust you feel with certain things you do, is all part of my process.

I have to work this way, this process is who I am.

Other people have other processes, and maybe some of their processes are better, less stressful. I hope so anyway.

Mine is not a very nice process, you kind of wish it was easier. And sometimes it does seem to be, sometimes it feels like you ARE getting it, you ARE able to keep the art coming at a high level, that you ARE becoming more consistent.

But more often than not, you fall back again into the frustration, and in particular with the feeling that you're not heading down the right pathway, that you aren't seeing what needs to be seen, and that you're a pathetic hack.

You get a strong feeling that you're working in the wrong medium, that if you were to find the right one everything would work out slick.

It doesn't help that people are constantly telling you what they like, and you tend to get influenced by that. If you sell something, it's very easy to think you should do more of that, if somebody says Your BIG OIL PAINTINGS are GREAT (implying that everything else you do isn't great) you tend to think they're right, that you've been wasting your time doing anything that isn't a BIG OIL PAINTING.

This is what is called in the business An Obstacle.

There a plentitude of obstacles in life, and in anything that you want to accomplish and there a billion zillion obstacles in ART. Art is full of 'em and as people proceed in ART they start falling by the wayside as they can't manage to overcome various obstacles.

I know that I've mentioned this before but I bring it up now because I really think the MOSTEST of the BESTEST obstacle that I've run across is this one mentioned above, where you feel (at certain times) that you aren't good enough.

To overcome this obstacle means to NOT CARE what other people think about what you're doing, it means NOT CARING if you sell something or not, it means NOT JUDGING what you do and just let it be.

And in particular it means NOT BEING SWAYED by other people's opinions.

This is a very tuff one and I think a lot of people do pretty well for a while in ART but hit this brick wall pretty SMACK dead on.

Hopefully, part of my process as I proceed and not let this obstacle bother me (much) is that as you get further and further into the whole thang, that you start to free up a little, you start to really hit the place that you want to hit, partly because you've stuck to your guns and HAVEN'T been influenced by people around you.

That's what I'm hoping anyways.

I sort of see it a little, I sorta see things that I've been doing lately that I could never have done before, could never have thought of seemingly.

But you're so close to what you're doing it's very difficult to see how things have changed, to see improvement. If anything you are rewarded in reverse more often than not, by people liking what you did previously opposed to what you're doing now. They're not seeing improvement in what you're doing, they see a falling off. (oh boy, what an obstacle!).

So anyhoo, lately I've been feeling a little bit more confused about things, about direction and I think it's probably no coinkydink that it's happened when I've been about as successful as I've been at selling pieces for higher prices and it's happened when I've gotten more and more varying opinions about what people think is good about my art. Also, add into this mix rejections from places that I've applied to, rejections that are everywhere sometimes.

It's tuff but I think it's good and, as I say, part of a process that gets you through an obstacle (let's hope) and spits you out on the other side, free and clear.

I think for me in these times I have to concentrate on what I think is good, and what I think continues to be worth pursuing which would be:

1) Being a conduit, not being a reasoner or a thinker or trying to look at things logically.
2) Including people in the paintings with the idea of trying to get beyond their appearance and in particular explore how that character relates to every other person in the whole world.
3) Including a dark side.
4) including a humorous side
5) including writing (but not always)
6) concentrating on making the color as good as I can.

so that's it....Easy, huh?