Art Talk

Last Wednesday, I had the honor of being invited to speak at a local art league on my approach to art.  I passed around a couple of handouts and reminded everyone that you make art because you have to and not to worry what anyone thinks of it.  It took me a lot of years of angst and tears to get to that point.  Don't get me wrong--it's the best feeling in the world to hear that someone enjoys your art or that it speaks to them.  However, your art won't come from your heart, it won't be full of your truth or your experience if you're making it to please someone else.  And, in a weird twist of events, the closer you are to your own truth, the closer you'll come to truly touching on someone else's truth.  Isn't that wild?  Here's a few snaps other people took of just some of my creations.

Double-Fisted

Double-Fisted

Yesterday was National Pie Day so I posted a pic of a British Treacle Tart I made with Brazilian acai sauce over on my Listen to Me Pie Lady blog.  It's a funny thing though.  After I spend time baking and posting my edible creations, I feel guilty about this blog.  Not really guilty about the blog, I suppose, but about "cheating" on my artwork with culinary pursuits.  Isn't that crazy?  I have been baking and cooking since I was 8 years old, I truly have.  I moved to San Francisco to be a chef, something I have written about before, so works in the kitchen have been with me for a long time.

But I've noticed a pattern within myself.  Too long away from drawing and painting, and I start to feel like I will "lose it."  I immediately want to test myself to make sure I still "have it."  I'm drawing all the time; post-it notes at work, doodles on the back of grocery receipts.  I don't even post all these things.  Yet, I needed to reassure myself that I could sit down and create a little line drawing after eating that slice of sweetness.

Here it is:  Double-Fisted.  Maybe it's my art self telling me to "get back to it" or else. (-;

Day 59 Two Tears in a Bucket...the point of making art (SOLD)

I read an article today about why people might not like your art.  One of the points was that it wasn't "in style."

Oh boy.  (That's putting it nicely.)

I hate rules.  Not the rules that are put in place to protect people, like driving on the correct side of the road.  I actually wish there were rules that said you should say "please" and "thank you."  Be kind.  That would be a nice one for people to adhere to in a day.

What I mean to say is, I hate rules that say you should wear this and not that.  You should feel this and not that or at least don't feel it all too deeply.  You should live your life this way and not that. You should make this kind of art in order to be fashionable or profitable or to be famous or to stick to one style.  Pleeeeease don't tell me how to live my one and only life.

Well, listen.  I'd love to sell all my work. I'd love to be famous.  But I wouldn't love to curtail what I'm feeling so I make sure that I fit in with the current mindset of society.  I mean, what's the point of that?  Maybe if you're just aiming for world domination.  I guess that might seal it, while you simultaneously feel like a fake or dead inside for not expressing how you really feel.

One of my favorite sayings of "getting on with it" comes from the book and movie of the same name, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."  When the hormone-treatment-taking transvestite, Lady Chablis, says to John Cusack (John Kelso), "It's like my mama always said:  'Two tears in a bucket, mother fuck it.'"  (That's not putting it nicely.)

I already know that my style of art is not everyone's cup of tea, and that's o.k.  I do hope that some people like it--I even secretly wish someone would love it.  But in the grand scheme of things and in the quest of living life with some kind of truthfulness, I hope I like my art most of all.