Lately I've been making attempts at producing a painting that no one has ever seen before. Nothing like it before EVER!
I have a little dog that sits with me in the studio and sometimes I can't see him and I call out his name and he's just right behind me. I make a painting and look at it and think its totally new then I look through a magazine on the table behind me and it looks like the one on the back cover.
Ben, great to hear from you! Maybe you should stop reading art mags...
ReplyDeleteFirrils, though, I have LOVED everyone's romantic defense of dinosaur riding! It was just what I needed. I loved both Jacob's and Nishiki's attaching painting to essential PHYSICAL acts like eating and touching. Obviously this is one of the possibilities of painting, and interestingly it makes me think of Pollock's "One" at MoMA, which was the singular painting that made me most want to be a painter. Mostly, because in that painting I thought I could most successfully and simultaneously "see" and "feel" that painting immediately. Imagine that...having an external object make me connect the senses of sight, touch, with a little imagination thrown in, because I could also envision/feel Pollock making it. So it was also a connection to another human being, godforbid.
So...unrealistic goals: to make a difference in a person's daily life. That might be overly simple, but it's quite audacious when you think about it. A meaningless, static object being able to make an imprint on someone else, given all the competing factors we talked about. And, I would say, I would love it when painters/artists are engaged by my work, but I think it is harder (and therefore more ambitious and unrealistic) to try and affect a "civilian" or "non-painter-human". Having a painter "feel" the touch of another by looking at a painting is one thing, but it is entirely another to have someone who has perhaps never had the privilege to make something with their own hands that they are proud of be "touched" by a painting.