Bonnard, Woman Lying on a Bed, 1899
What would be great–is if I had enough time, and so little distraction, that everyday I could wake up like I did today.
I woke up thinking–which is typical–but we had time and no kids so I grabbed the new ArtForum and my notebook. I climbed back into bed on this cold November morning–the sun is so wonderful this time of day in our bedroom–and I listened to Brandon not snore but only breathe and even though the kitty kept dashing in front of my pages I felt–this is where I want to be. Finally.
My mind clear enough to take this information and these images and digest it, absorb the energy out of it that inspires and transforms myself, my art. That thing I constantly neglect while busy with everything else I am obligated to do in life, but always nagging at the base of my spine, the corners of my heart, the depths of my stomach.
The question arises, What is YOUR art? What are YOU doing? and WHY?
And as I am vaguely thinking those thoughts I read a review of the exhibition “Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors” (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) by Richard Aldrich. He states, “You kind of get the feeling that Bonnard was a real artist. He was concerned not with the past (art history), present (his contemporaries), or future (his legacy), but with expressing himself in terms of his own perceptions, interactions, and experiences of the world…each painting becomes a mirror in which Bonnard is seeing himself. This inward focus, which could be seen as a selfish stance, creates a palpable sense of humanness in his paintings that is completely exterior. Something genuniely tender and vulnerable in his understanding of the complexities and simplicities of himself and what he is painting makes his work, in the end, timeless.”
And maybe I was only intrigued by this because it sort of justifies my own work, which in the past has been somewhat self absorbed, and I’ve become increasingly aware of this and feeling guilty about it–like my work should be about something more important than simply my encounters with life. I ask myself lots of questions about this, but haven’t received very many answers yet. At least nothing ORIGINAL, which for me, is really the most important aspect of my own art–doing something that hasn’t been done.
Richard Aldrich, Boy with Machines, 2007
I feel like I am at a turning point in my life, and with my art, and that everything has been very disconnected and irrelevant with the other parts–but there has to be some common thread running throughout everything that I can take hold of. Now I’m just rambling…
What I wrote down was:
My Work
Directions
Interviews of unimportant artists via Google Wave (I have this urge to use this in art making)
Sociology – prisons in U.S.A.
Print – zines – pamphlets – blog
vintage
textiles
stories – paintings – others
response
“language as opportunity” -Tauba Auerbach
Tauba Auerbach, The Answer/Wasn’t Here (anagram III), 2007
But maybe there doesn’t have to be an answer. I will just keep doing what I always do everyday, and take small steps toward being the person, and the artist, I want to be.
