--After reading some of the other finalist's blog postings, I feel like I've been avoiding the issue of what exactly, or how exactly, my project could effect change. It is great to see all the energy that everyone is putting into figuring out how to make their work more effective politically or socially, or how to design a proposal that addresses "issues".--I would like to make a plea (and this is probably more for my benefit than anyone else) that as artists, we must trust our instincts, and also trust in the ability of painting (we're mostly painters) to carry meaning in ways that we understand non-verbally and intuitively.
--There is something to the notion of going "outside our comfort zone", and I think in trying to tackle this project everyone seems to be experiencing that, but I know for me that in order to complete an ambitious project like this (if I am chosen) that I would have to be working on something that compelled me as an artist, not just a concerned Vermonter.
--All the research I have done for my project will weave it's way in to whatever I make, I hope and trust.
--I am excited about the project I am working on, and in fact will carry it through and complete it whether I am chosen or not.
4 comments:
Sparkle (I don't remember your real life name now-) thank you for your comments, and upon reading your blog, could not agree more- we need to remember that we are painters- at least you and I are- and that we paint best. I need to be able to go out and do my paintings, and hope, like you say that research filters into the process... It is not in my nature to give speeches and lecture about inequities, thats why I paint.
thanks for your commment to me, it helps like you wouldn't believe.
Word up....couldn't agree with you both more.
To me painting is about achieving a fluency in a particular visual language, and then figuring out what can be best said in that language. At times I have been frustrated by attempts to go in the reverse, however I always come back to the realization that my inability to work in a particular box not of my design is a proof of something.....
Colin, your arguement is so compelling that I have to weigh in, if only to say - 'yes!'
When I started this project I thought it would be an opportunity to try out new forms of artistic language; I even wrote something in my essay about my interest in incorporating text and abstraction into my work. What I found was that those languages don't suit my tongue (or rather, my brush) Everything came out looking dated, strident, and formulaic. Eventually I came to the same realization you state so eloquently here, to wit, that I needed to do something that had a natural and compelling appeal to me as an artist and that I needed to use my own hard won language.
I whole-heartedly agree that painting has its own, non-verbal means of communication; this point plays into what Clair, Susan and Dana were discussing, i.e., what can a painting do? As I indicated in my post on the subject, a painting does what a painting does - it affects a particular kind of change: a deep, non-verbal, shift in awareness.
Colin et all, I agree--paintings speak a non-verbal language, and don't "effect change" in the way we might if we were all community organizers. But visual art does have an impact--what do we remember most from history, politics or art? Most art before the 19th century was commissioned, and Giotto, Caravaggio, even John Singer Sargent speak directly to us, in a visual language. I think the opportunity in the Art of Action commissions is to speak in the language of our specialized craft, or calling, and have an audience that will hear (ok, see) some truth about where we live. Who else but us is going to say (paint) in reaction to the question we're asked, which basically is (apart from some of the committee-inspired language in the prospectus): why are we all living here in Vermont, why do we love this place, or at least feel something real about it, and what's worth protecting?
Post a Comment