EUREKA!

This Sunday, at breakfast with my roommates, I had the BEST Eureka! moment!!!!

One of them asked me what I thought about Jackson Pollock. As I was explaining how much I love him, something sort of just spilled out of my mouth that made SO MUCH sense in regards to how I view art and why I lean toward creating art a certain way. I was surprised when it came out, but I felt a huge sense of relief that I had finally reached a new understanding of my own art.

What I realized is this:

I really love Pollock and I finally figured out that it isn't because I find his paintings to be visually beautiful, in the same way that I do not create art that is visually beautiful. That breakfast was the first time I said out loud (and realized, period) that I do not create beautiful art. This was a huge, huge, huge realization for me.
For one thing, it made me realize the discomfort I was having with creating art that is technically simple, but conceptually elaborate. I feel an incredible pressure with creating conceptual art that isn't "pretty" in an academic setting. It can be an uncomfortable feeling for me when other students are looking at and judging what I create. My work is not beautiful in the way theirs is; I avoid portraits and tomato plants and the norm. Whatever that is. At an academic level, my work is out of place and can be confusing. It's hard for my visions to reach their full potential in the current environment. Taken out of the context of a school, I really think they would thrive.

I have begun to completely view art not as something seen, but something perceived. I naturally gravitate toward art that typically falls short of being visually pleasing for the average person. I can FEEL the emotion emanating from these works. The artist has allowed me to experience some of what he is feeling...something important has been revealed. CONCEPTCONCEPTCONCEPTPROCESS.

I never allow myself to emulate the skill of another artist, because it should be a given that each artist does have skill. This is something that should be recognized and not forgotten, but not always shown. I should not need to paint the human figure beautifully over and over for others to understand that I can do so.
The artist community needs to first except this fact. I believe that anyone creating beautiful things for the reason of beauty is more of a craftsperson than an artist. I do not mean this in a critical way whatsoever. But I hold that if we can all recognize that we have skill and do not feel the need to prove it, or have it proven to us, we would stop getting stuck on the beautiful and move on to something much deeper and more important. That way, we might all start finding answers.

And that's just skimming the top




endpost.
sketchsteph/