Inside Out...About the process

Ever the observers, artists in a sense do rob from people. Their experiences may translate into a line from a book or play, a song lyric, a photograph or a painting, etc. That's usually okay though, and why is that?  I think it is because the artist has interpreted it from within their own personal experience and it has become a part of themselves.  They are not separate from the work but speak from within it.  Too much detachment and the work is a lifeless intellectual manipulation, and the subject is like a bug in a jar.

I've been thinking about Austin, the landscape painter in Jane Urquart's provoking book The Underpainter. He reduced his life to the controlled rectangular views contained on his canvas.  These narrow, precise windows enabled him to keep his life and his anxiety about human emotion at a distance. His intimate studies of his model/muse are in his own words an " intimate violation", cold and calculating. Austin takes himself and his "work" very seriously, never letting it conflict with any personal attachments. Yet as he searches for passion in his work,  he doesn't realize that he has missed his opportunity again and again because of his unwillingness to accept love in his life. Sounds great, huh?  Yet it is a heartbreaking look at the interior of an artist's life.

I've known artists like that.  Somehow in dedicating themselves to their work, they take themselves too seriously. In their desire for success they set themselves apart and above the rest of us. Austin shows us the trap inherent in that position.  Life is messy. Period.  It seems to me that profound meaningful artistic expression comes from entering the fray, getting bumped around, usually a lot, and coming up for air from time to time.  Art comes from within us, is translated through our beings. For me, making art is an experience in itself, filled with struggle, exhilaration, fear, and the pure pleasure of seeing images emerge from chaos.  That is the joy of it, to feel my ideas, experiences, inspirations, and observations reorganize and synthesize into one unique visual image.