Art, Life and Post-modern Ennui

The other night(my birthday actually) I decided to test myself. I've been in a bit of a comfy spot concerning my work. I've developed this mature style of drawing over a period of about 8 years that for lack of a better word, has been dominated by nudes and erotic work. Now, I don't really know how that will translate into mainstream work' that I can make a living at and/or somehow make MORE of a living than I am now. I never needed a focus group to tell me I was good. In some ways I have done exactly what I set out to do-sorry if this sounds a bit Pinnochio-become a REAL artist and actually have other people I don't know buy my work and show appreciation. Now I WILL Go to the Ball!...she exclaimed.



Those are, as any artist knows, ephemeral goals that mean different things at different times in our working life as an artist. What is success, what is 'good' work? You do your best and hope that there is enough 'there' there in ones work to make it worth what you ask for it.

I've reached a point where I have done the things I set out to do as an artist, things I wanted to achieve and, for lack of a better reason, things I also wanted to avoid. Scaling the art world and its dangerously derailing curves has blown one than one artist off path and it has been with tenuous steps that I ever began to show solo. In group shows I was always a standout. My work was often singled out as being the best of the group or at worst, up at the top of a larger group of artists. Finally showing by myself was liberating but scary as hell. Will people 'get' what I am trying to do-when even I have no idea what's going on? Does my work stand alone, does it behave provocatively enough as an idea on (in this case) paper?

Then there is the constant struggle to balance the need to express with actually having SOMETHING to say. No one dances so that others see them dancing, but to dance although they can come together on the best of occasions. Luckily I think I have something to offer, something that IS different. Like all my favorite artists I managed to synthesize something from all my experiences-good and bad-to tell a story no one else can. I know that I am talented but would never say 'how much'. Talent, art and beauty are so subjective I am just trying to do what it is that ONLY I can do. I draw spiders that sing in the corners of my room. I look down at the veins in my arm and imagine a massive delta hundreds of miles wide doused with a blanket of stars-but when I draw it, it comes out as a Manta ray with a man inside interpolated with fins, forked tails, feathers and its all melted together. The spaceship has turned on me...."I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that."

The day I turned 38 I decided to test myself and draw "bigger". To see if I could, and the effect it would have on my work. my life is in a different place, as am I. What does my work look like NOW. Right now? Am I a photographer? Am I a fine artist working with traditional mediums? am I a multimedia artist? a writer? a songwriter? and don't even get me started on catagories!!



A craftsman? How to harness all this potential and still have time and money to allow for work to happen naturally-not so totally shoehorned into somewhere it badly fits. I have seen the neurosis of NOT being able to create. Not being able to write music for almost 2 years? Not being to able to make so much as a single guitar strum or single key of piano? fucking christ I don't know how I have managed. There are thousands of songs in my head. thousands. if I could just get them out somehow...somehow.

So what am I? Am I lost or am I like the stars. You see them in the night sky, but the star's light is an illusion-a trick of time-and what we actually see is the compressed energy of the light being shot through space from hundreds of years ago-but we think its right now. It feels like that is what is sometimes happening with my art. I just keep emitting, hoping that somehow in time(not hundreds of years mind you) that someone will see my light, someone who can mentor me and help me figure out how to better wield my flaming sword without chopping my head off or burning the house down.

At least I have a muse....and I'm up for the downstroke. love on ya.

Oh, and I passed the test.