Here follow an assortment of my recent musings on the phenomenon of artmaking, an impractical enterprise at worst and the most amazing and entrancing thing ever at best, whether the artist is three or ninety-three. Motivations and objectives are considered as well as the actuality of mark-making itself.
However impractical, choosing to make art is a life essential for some, the ones we call artists and the ones who call themselves artists but refrain from broadcasting their avocations. Pursuing art can take many forms, from studio work to commercial endeavor to solo thought projects, from art teaching to art watching to collaborative production processes. Artmaking can be very selfish; but without relentless dedication there can be little worth showing to anyone else, let alone to an audience called to an exhibition. Continuing the dedication while lacking significant appreciation and remuneration is commonplace and often dispiriting but can also be freeing because the activity of artmaking will remain unencumbered by particularized expectation. Dedication to an unrewarded objective, to the goal of crafting one-of-a-kind art objects whether headed for temporary public display or a lonely basement cupboard, is usually incomprehensible to those not bitten by the "art bug." But that objective, however unworldly, is key to the artist.
Objectives, whether clearcut or tangential, obviously influence both present and future production but may not be easily defined or explicated, possibly may only be accessible as image memory, dream, or some amorphous essence. For most producers active in the fine arts, there is always something extra in any series of works, something off-theme, not necessarily indicative of new directions but notably quizzical or rebellious or preposterous. Alternatively, others observe a pattern of plateaux or levels to their work history, maybe not easily noted by outsiders, but nonetheless representing a pattern which features cyclical or recurring material. Whenever the same themes revisit the artist, possibly over a period of years, recognizably familiar imagery may intertwine, wax and wane, gather importance or undergo severe adjustments, hopefully maintaining vitality and core meaning but perhaps revealing some transcendence with regard to the original intentional objective.
Physical aging of the artist also comes into play, as there will inevitably be varying perceptual decisions as the decades roll by; yet it is the continuous maturing and experience-widening of the artist mindset that leads to latter day masterworks and/or frustrating epiphanies. The internal life is fraught, complex, and restless as there is never time enough for completing a perfect image, enjoying the "work that creates itself", constructing something grand imaginatively, without materials, and later physically, with imperfect and inadequate tools, means, and media. Accumulating a large body of work is easier, and may even be more superficially satisfying, than creating only a few excellent pieces, never accepting the merely competent or representative as good enough.
Here is another scenario: getting lost in the wonderland of media possiblity and meanwhile juggling the vaunted objective, the artist may expect soon to present a compelling opus. Sometimes that is exactly what happens. However, an artist may become perpetually caught up in mark-making, in studying the thing beside the mark or shape that "works", considering what the ideal mark touches and what is touched next or after or soon, looking for ever more effective resources, alternative paths or sidelines, and fruitful stimuli. The ideal of actual accomplishment or production can become subsumed while the artist contemplates teasing and fracturing mirages, frustratingly impossible to pin down in an acutal work of art.
Some active artists may describe their working process as involving unending correction, as in tweaking or pinching that first mark or shape or active movement and trying again and again to begin precisely in the right way. Were the starting mark perfect, they could easily stop right there. Sometimes any sort of mark will do, just to get going, to get making, to get seeing, to get involved, to get engulfed, to get "there." Whatever the preceding planning, measuring, tracing, or reasoning, the initial mark retains indelible importance, even if it is immediately expunged to be replaced by some other mark or shape or move. Even if only a ghost, the first mark will stay with the work forever or until destruction; and, sometimes, destruction is the only fitting tribute and not necessarily a negative one. Further works are waiting.
Styles are not usually specifically chosen. They are often merely means to an end: when no longer of use, they can be shed, although perhaps a proffered explanation will feature the ideals of transformation or enlargement of vision. Styles are also not usually dictated by media, as pushing, challenging whatever media currently available is normal procedure. Using what's at hand to make the work is not only aceptable or necessary but hugely admired.
These miscellaneous jottings may not apply to all artists, or even to many, but they surely apply to some; and, with any luck, the ideas here expressed will help friends and watchers of artists to understand something of the nature of artmaking, of the subculture and typical everyday worries and attitudes.
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