Knowing.
Creativity is about doubt and uncertainty. It’s about having the uncontrollable urge to fill in a space that appears empty. Art, after all, takes viewers to places they haven’t seen or if they’re viewing a painting of a specific place, person, or object — then they are seeing it from an unfamiliar point of view — in other words — not their own.
I’m beginning to allow myself to not know, but that makes it difficult to explain what my paintings are about because people want to know.
What’s it supposed to be?
The immediate answer I give is that it’s an abstract figure. That makes sense, since the beginning of the process starts with a figure drawing. If people choose to spend their time looking for “the figure” I accept that as a legitimate way to view my work. In the process of making a painting, I put a lot of effort into trying to find the figure — either the original one or the one(s) that emerge through the process.
But even the most realistic painting of a figure is an abstraction because it is one person’s representation of the object — it is not the object itself. Rene Magritte captured that in his “Pipe” Painting. Magritte was exploring relationships between words, images, and “reality.”
I want my paintings to exceed thought. I believe “reality” is experiential. It is experienced at the intersection of thought, emotion, physical sensation, and belief. I’m not a true abstract painter because I believe that even the most abstract painting is referring to some sense of reality. It may not be the “common” sense, but the fact that it can be painted — made physical — makes it real. The viewer might not “understand” it, but if the purpose of the painting is to make the viewer look and see — then what the viewer is seeing is — at the very least — creativity.
And doesn’t that have a place in the real world?
In the four different stages of the painting I worked on yesterday 1) I finally let go of the original figure that I was clinging to, 2) I tried to apply my “technique” of strengthening shape and line to see what was “really” there on the canvas, 3) I made a “mess” of it by painting with all the anxiety I was feeling, and 4) I edited out the parts that I didn’t like or were drawing all my attention.
At each stage the figure (original intention), the thoughts (technical resources), the emotions (the intangible), and knowledge that this was a painting (belief) were ever-present. It isn’t done. It has changed and will continue to.
And yet it’s all there. It’s as real as it will ever be.
I know it.