Gotta Do It

So, ya wanna be in a top notch gallery or a museum? Very few artists do both. But so what? My thoughts a few weeks went all over the place. Painting got better – check! Talk to teacher about life after grad school – check! Visit to the Long Beach Airport to pick up my son for spring break – check! Took my son to the Museum of Jurassic Technology (http://www.mjt.org/), Nova Color (http://novacolorpaint.com/) - a painters paint store in Culver City, and Venice beach – check! Homework, physical fitness, groceries, laundry, taxes done, meals prepared, reading done, papers to write – check! 

Brown Rice, String, and Wire on Canvas

I started school for one reason and now I am stuck in the quagmire of reality. When my kids, two boys 12 and 14, come home I begin to wonder: am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right place? What you don’t know is that I sent them both off to boarding school so that I could be in graduate school full-time. I really wanted to be at CGU (http://www.cgu.edu). Still do. Then they come home and my emotions go amuck. I signed myself up for this trip into the Art World. I want to make art and I want to bring people together in community with art as the glue. I Gotta Do It.

I am fairly certain I am meant to do this. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line I did not pick up enough self-esteem to believe in myself fully and I am feeling that way right now this week. This feeling of being unsure comes and goes. The feeling worsens when I look around. I have classmates that are taking enormous risks, sharing stories about themselves, stuff I hide and stuff inside. I see artists in our class readings that are asking big questions, presenting what I consider to be really tough topics – topics that have made me question what I hide. 

The work that I have been reading addresses some of the following topics: questions of women’s experience, identity, race, and the “absurdity of existence” (pg.164, Taylor) as well as questions of teenage angst and even childhood. I continue to hide, behind my layer paintings. I am unsure and unready to say more, unless I could become anonymous. That’s not what artists do. Picasso says this in a different way, “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” My art is not lying but the whole truth is not yet represented in my work.

These thoughts bring me back to the beginning of this semester when questions presented themselves: What does open and transparent really mean? How about reveal and conceal? Find and hide? Show and tell? Does transparency also mean that one needs to be open to questions and worse, critiques of the self? 

A statement came up in class this week that made me think deeper. Artists try very hard to undo what they know so that they may present from their inner voice. Picasso said this differently, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” I know of no other profession where adults go into the deepest recesses of emotion and pain and curiosity and then work from there only to come up again, as if for air, and try to act like a stable adult in the “real” world. You have recently asked us what is counter-culture today and what is radical? I think about that. Is it radical to be a stay-at-home mom who becomes artist, or do I need to tell more of my story?

I have been painting with food lately – rice, lentils, noodles – it is real food.

Noodles, Canvas and String on Canvas

I go to the grocery store instead of the art store to purchase what I need. I will be asking the viewer to interact with what is real but it is not real anymore because it is archived on canvas with gesso, varnishes and bees wax – the food I use can never be cooked or eaten – in a way it is archived.

Yellow Peas and Wild Rice Well Organized in Clear Gesso on Panel

Museum Morsbroich has a show of Michael Schmidt’s photographed food – in production, processing, packaging and presentation (http://www.museum-morsbroich.de/). In my mind, a photograph removes the viewer from reality because it is a presentation of a moment in time captured on film.

Michael Schmidt, “Untitled, # 22,” from: “Lebensmittel,” 2006–2010. Photography, 54,1 x 81,8 cm. © Michael Schmidt

Instead I have food either organized or in chaos on canvas with string and wire layered at times to “anchor” the piece or give the food structure – much like the fields it was grown in – and much like the societal structures we endure. The first time I made a rice painting I used about 2 cups of rice – enough for eight servings, when cooked.

I hated myself for painting with rice; yet I felt compelled to keep going and make more food paintings.

Yellow Peas and Wild Rice in Encaustic on Panel

I don’t know how to explain the works. While at Nova Color (http://novacolorpaint.com/) with my son I bought more supplies to make more food paintings. My son thought it was great to hear and see me buy supplies in a place that has a doorbell to get into and that to be taken seriously I had to know what I was talking about to get in and to buy the supplies. I keep hoping the idea will come; about why am I painting with food.

Pop Corn in Encaustic

There is not a simple answer like: I miss cooking for my children, grocery shopping and family dinners. I really don’t – or do I? Picasso says, “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. ” Painting in food allows me to buy larger quantities of food like I did when my children lived at home.

Mixed Lentils, String and Wire on Canvas

Obviously there is more to it than that. I hated grocery shopping – still do. I love family dinners. How will I ever talk about the abstract concepts and art historical relationships to my works in food when I cannot figure it out? I am in a prison of my own making, I sent the kids away and now I make art – they come home and I want to make art but I need to go grocery shopping and cook meals. Paul McCarthy said it so well: “the experience of being confronted with my existence was suddenly overwhelming.” (pg. 164, Taylor) The only way to live in the box I created is: I Gotta Do It.

Taylor, Brandon. Contemporary Art: Art Since 1970. Prentice Hall, 2005.  (http://books.google.com/books/about/Contemporary_art.html?id=sH_uAAAAMAAJ)