In the years since I graduated from art school, I've begun to suspect that making art is nothing but inventing totally unnecessary problems for yourself to solve. Going to poetry school only further crystallized this theory as law.
Why do I do it, what for, I mumble to myself late at night as I try to determine what makes a mountain 'mountain-like' when you remove the horizon line.
I could be watching TV instead. We live in a golden era of good TV, and here I am manufacturing drama over a fictional mountain in a fake horizon-less dream space in a totally unnecessary painting that nobody besides me will ever look at for more than 15 seconds.
I don't have the answer to that question. If I find the answer in a book, I'll let you know.
In the meantime, since I am one of those people losing sleep over whether I will ever be an adequate-enough painter of floating rock forms and fake animals, I invite you to share in these dilemmas with me.
This blog will focus mainly on problems, challenges, difficulties. As mentioned above, these problems will rarely be 'real' problems, but problems that live inside the lonely, weird rabbit hole of trying to become a better artist.
Whatever that means, right?
Sometimes these problems are technical, or craft related. Sometimes these problems are questions of meaning, purpose, and intent. Like I said, I'm out of school, I'm a boring adult, so for the most part I won't use fancy terminology to talk about these problems or my practice. I'm too boring to try to impress people with words these days. I'm just a person with a day job trying to get better at something I care about.
One real problem, not really related to art but related to things I care about, is the continued threat to elephant habitats and elephant lives. These creatures are immense, soulful, and utterly deserving of their place on this planet. In the spirit of that, and in the spirit of modest attempts, I am committed to donating 15% of all art sales to elephant conservation and the care of elephant orphans. That's 15% of any purchase price, before I pay myself back for materials and time. That percentage may rise but it will never fall below 15%. A 'shop' section of this website is in the works and should be up soon.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll feel free to share your own thoughts and problems with me here.
