Well, hell

I’ve been struggling with the content (and style, but not as much) of my art for years. In the past year, though, I have felt a greater focus and a sense of what I want to paint. I’ve been calling that the Mystical Landscape. Most of my paintings are rooted in landscape, and for a long time, I really struggled with whether I wanted to paint traditional landscape paintings, like, for instance, the Luminists, or whether I wanted to do something a little more unique, a little more me personally.

I was very torn about this, and one of the big reasons why was because I could not tell exactly where that “me” was. Without that information, without a solid feeling of me, how could I expect to be able to paint something other than traditional?

The few times I created a successful abstract painting, it was so incredibly freeing. I didn’t have to try to make what I was painting look like what “everyone” thought it should look. I only had to be successful at recreating what was in my mind. That’s much more difficult than most detractors of abstract art can understand.

Anyway, I kept struggling with whether I should try to paint traditional landscapes, paint abstracts, or paint surreal landscapes as a kind of middle ground between the two. I felt like I was not succeeding at any of these things because my heart was not fully in it. There was too much static and noise.

This especially came to the fore when I had to give up acrylics for health reasons at the end of last year. This resulted in a lot of flailing around with mediums–from watercolor to casein to gouache, with a foray into oil, which I thought was wonderful but I couldn’t stand the smell of the oxidizing oil in my living space. Not to mention the amount of cat hair and lint and dust in my paint.

Then I had the idea of getting a studio. I knew if I got one that I would spend a LOT of time learning how to paint with oils, and I knew that I could become a competent oil painter. The fact is that for me, oils are easier to handle than acrylics ever were. I know this irks some oil paint snobs, but too bad.

I did end up getting the studio, which I can barely afford. And it has made a mammoth difference in my work. I have become far, far more productive and more adventurous.

And yet this past week I found myself retreating from that adventurousness. And if I am honest, it has been mostly about money.

The paintings I have produced in the past year have not sold anywhere near as well as the paintings I was doing last year with acrylics. My works have been rejected from shows and simply not purchased even in print form. It’s been discouraging. Very much so. It undermined my confidence and made me totally question my direction, which I thought had gained clarity. And yet no one wanted to buy what I made.

So what did I do? I got to thinking about how maybe I could do some traditional work. I do admire the technique of some of it. But more, I admire the sales.

I had been messing around with my watercolors, trying to learn how to paint wet-in-wet, as it is much more conducive to my mind to doing abstracts or dreamy stuff than painting wet on dry. I decided to try doing a bit more traditional stuff with them. And I produced some things that were okay–and one person thought a couple of them were worth buying even though I didn’t even have them for sale, for which I am very grateful. This got me thinking I could do a lot more traditional stuff and maybe sell it. And these were just tiny things, max 5 x 7″, so where was the problem with that? Could something so small contaminate my vision or sap my artistic strength, like some people warned? I didn’t think so. So I started doing those.

They are okay. But they are nothing to write home about. They will never make anyone gasp, like happened with my dreamy oil painting “Morning Shore,” which is under consideration for a show right now but which I still have up on my art home page. Still, the little watercolors were pleasant to paint. A challenge only in terms of technique.

Then I came across someone who is doing small, kind of Impressionist still lifes of fruits and vegetables that are selling pretty good. Not jillions, but enough to make a difference. And I thought, “I can do that.” I would like to make some money and it would be kind of fun. And they would be just small paintings. 5 x 7″ again. So I ordered a bunch of gessoboards in that size, because I must admit I have gotten to love gessoboard.

Later that day I went back and could not even remember why I had ordered that gessoboard. And when I did, I felt sort of … I don’t know. Like I’d made a mistake. Like, what was I thinking?

And now I know what that mistake is: it is doing traditional painting. I could see that by looking at the watercolor landscapes I did yesterday and today. They are fine. But they are bland and characterless. And I might as well be painting a rose on a dish. “Isn’t that bee-yoo-tee-full!” like my grandmother used to say of the most kitschy junk. 🙂 I loved her, but she had terrible taste.

It was just that I felt so pressed for money. I read an article in an artists’ magazine about how you have to make a choice between painting for your art or yourself or painting for money. I’ve certainly seen that discussed before, but I mulled it over for the millionth time, and thinking about how I didn’t have much coming in through my non-art shop, and my royalty check finally came but was much smaller than I had anticipated, and no one was buying my Mystical Landscape paintings, I thought I would paint traditional stuff. How different was it from making and selling incense and oils, after all?

Well, now I feel like my incense and oils are more honest than those little traditional paintings are. So I am not going to do any more of them. Those little gessoboards are going to have to be used for something else. Maybe studies of abstracts or playing with color (which is a great idea–something I always want to do but get afraid I will waste paint and support). At any rate, I won’t be using them for traditional landscapes. Or still lifes.

The other thing is that I find more and more physical limitation that I can not ignore anymore. I have been working on a painting that I thought could be the first in a series called “Little Demons.” This series idea IS me and not traditional, although it uses some traditional techniques and parodies traditional images. But the problem is that my hands are not steady enough anymore due to the essential tremor. It really helps that the support is stiff (that gessoboard again) and I can rest my arm on it, but I still cannot make the kind of nice clear line that I used to be able to do and that to some extent I still can do in watercolor because the paint has so much lower viscosity.

Hmm. Maybe that means I could do this series in watercolor instead of oil. Well, that would be quite demanding and might involve masking, which I hate. And to be honest, I feel like the level of detail I want to get into with those things would be detrimental to my progress. I would get mired in it. It has happened before. But, well, I’ll think about that.

This will be the only Little Demon I do in oil, that’s for sure. Instead, I will use the idea I am working with here–of incorporating the patterns of plants into other forms–in abstract work that is larger so that it is not so difficult to do neatly. And perhaps into Mystical Landscapes.

I’ve had a little post-it note on my computer since getting the studio that says “Just paint.” And I have been doing that, spending several hours a day painting over there and IMO making great strides. But today I changed that note. Now it says “Paintings of dreams.” Because that is the closest I can get to revealing the hidden, which is what I want my real, true work to do, and which I think it does do occasionally. I very much prize the number of times (and it has been more than a few) that people have told me that they feel like they have seen the imaginary landscapes that I paint before–perhaps in dream or trance or astrally–that in some sense they have actually been there before. Nothing makes me feel better.

So that is what I will focus on. I know it will not make me money. But I will be happier doing it. And for most of my life, my focus has not been on making money but on doing what makes me happy. This is so important for me as someone who has seen the deaths of their siblings. We can plan for the future, but in the end, all we have is now.