The Eyes Have It: A Route Away From Routine

Occasionally these things get very uncomfortable. I posted a while back about how drawn I am to paintings of figures who are looking at me and then how very shifty-skinned they make me also. The same rings true for my own paintings, apparently. I think I know why that is, beyond the obvious that I naturally would infuse this collection of strokes with a feeling of humanity. I feel like there's somebody there, the way you know when somebody is behind you in a room. I can think of them as friends, but it's more like holding a mirror angled under one's mental curtains. If you don't like what's there, then it can be a kind of terrible therapy experiment. But it can be really interesting if you keep looking anyway. This is how I found out the thing I was trying to say with my paintings. I looked at what was looking back at me. I could analyze the thing I'd done after the fact, and see my self communicating, finally understanding it. A friend of mine was talking about her recent epiphany in this regard, how she finally realized what it is she'd been trying to say, trying to show. The great thing, the weight-lifted feeling you get at this point, is about finding direction and realizing it's a solid path, a truthful path. So from there it explodes, right, it just blossoms wild and the whole world shifts to fit. It's chaotic and rambunctious. You are flooded with ideas. From there, it will change.

You can try to shut it up, but once you find out, it's pretty impossible to do that. You can make your art commonplace by forgetting the ecstacy and following an algorithm. You can keep digging and pushing yourself further through your internal jungle. You can make new paths through the jungle, now that you know how, and say more. I've found it's not always about the mixed race thing with me, but sometimes about vitiligo, sometimes about gender, the connections between family members, the connections between members of society. How does one keep this thing fresh? Keep looking.

Each piece I work on leads to others. I'm nervous about this or that thing, how it will be percieved, if I can execute this or that aspect. So I look in the painted eyes that are looking back at me, and let the conversation evolve. There isn't any reason to know the answers before I begin, the questions are the interesting part. It's not as much about, "What do I want to say?", as "What did I just reveal?". I start a painting thinking of a very loosely worded question and by the end of it I realize I've asked more of them and more precisely. The statement is made at the end of the process, the conclusion of my argument with myself. What is really wonderful is when somebody else sees a conversation in a painting of mine that I didn't even know about. That's the community that art creates, I suppose. Curiosity is key. I can only start with myself.

So in order to maintain the excitement, the desire to keep on in the wide unknown instead of turning for the safety of the cottage, I talk to myself. Yeah, ha ha, I know. But artists have to keep asking, answering and laying bare. The questions might be about the way light affects texture, or it might be about the the solidity of dreams. Whatever the questions, there are always more to explore. A hungry mind just gets hungrier the more it's fed. And that's a very, very good thing.


Laurelin