What interests me about art?
For me creating art is an extension of my own life process of understanding who I am, and understanding Life, and really just exploring what is here as my existence, as this existence as a whole. This might seem a bit existential but for me its just who I am and how I have always been.
What is the point of our existence, of our lives here on earth, of life itself. Doesn’t everybody ask themselves these questions? I assume that a lot of people do ask themselves these questions but maybe just don’t verbalize it much or give it that much attention. Art for me is a way to focus in on these questions for myself.
Art is also just Fun! Its so cool to create a piece if art and then to stand back and look at what you created and think about how you could never have imagined such a creation where there is a dimension of creating art that is completely unexpected or uncontrollable in a way.
The art I make is like windows into existence for me to look into and reflect on the questions I posed above about life and understanding it.
My Art is also about my own Self Development. A vehicle within which I can support myself to practice things like Self Discipline, Expressiveness, Openness, Forgiveness, Precision, Planning, Deliberateness, and the list goes on.
I also like to use my art to express what is going inside me. Sometimes I aim to express specific experiences that I have, or have had, other times I ‘let it go’ a bit and just express and then Look as I am creating to See what is HERE and what I can see or articulate. So art can be therapeutic for me as well.
How and Why I do art does change over time. At this stage of my Art Process, I have been moving more and more into doing ART as a Career, and this has opened up many other dimensions for me to consider and learn about.
But fundamentally, with my art, I want to create something REAL!
Something of Substance. So much of our reality these days is actually designed to manipulate, to hide, to cover up the truth, and this is done on conscious and unconscious levels where we as a species have conditioned ourselves to not go beyond the surface and delve into the depths of ourselves.
So for me, one of my purposes with my art is to Add Depth to our lives. To have it be something of actual Value. It doesn’t have to be pretty or nice to look at. But it has to have substance.
My art I realize is an Exact Reflection of Myself and will only reflect Depth if I myself am imbued with that same depth through my own personal process on this earth of introspecting and becoming Self Aware of myself, human nature, and how this reality really works.
So, I don’t claim that my art has all of these qualities I am speaking about here in this blog, though it is a Directive and Purpose I have with Myself in My Art, for it to be and become these points that I mention, and of course, I am open to any other dimension that might open up as well in terms of how I could move and express myself within my art expression.
I was thinking the other day about ‘What Makes Good Art’ as I have heard that question asked so many times. I thought to myself, ‘well, it would be the same as what makes a good conversation’ Art is really just something normal. It is just an expression of ourselves, like a conversation we have with someone. So “What Makes a Good Conversation?” Depth, Intimacy, Realness, Honesty, Enjoyment. Good conversations are not always pretty, sometimes tough love is needed, or constrictive criticism. And again sometimes great conversations happen unexpectedly, like art, or they are just goofy. Sometimes they are planned, like a meeting that has a lot of structure. Good Art like Good Conversations can happen in different ways. I thought this was a good analogy to understanding what art is and what makes good art.
