Thinking out loud

Down and out a week with the flu! Ugh. I finally was upright this weekend and giving some additional thought to my life and art:

Commission Project

Now is the time for me to become a “full time artist and a part time everything else” (Chuck Close) There isn’t anything about painting that I don’t want to know. One of my earliest goals was to learn every craft in the world. I love to learn how to make things. This desire shows up in my work. Perhaps I should reign it in. But I have to say that at the root of artmaking for me, below all of the reasons I have for doing things, is an absolute love of making things, of physically creating with my hands, of the skills required to make things.

With that in mind I’ve been searching for what kind of work would best provide money for my family to live while generating something positive for my artwork. I’ve run through all sorts of solutions. But last night I realized that painting would be the best. Anything that helps develop my understanding of art, my skill in making work, my relationship to the images I try to reproduce.

Everything I do is relevant to me on multiple levels. When I started the Collaboration project I wanted to paint something without prejudice. I wanted to subvert my usual way of handling space, my usual way of making decisions about what to focus on. But I also wanted to find a way to use art to connect with the people in my life. I wanted to see if my painting could become part of my relationships in a very concrete way. The result was the series of grid paintings. And I think the answer was, yes, painting can become part of my relationship- at least as long as I’m making the actual painting. A lot of interesting issues were uncovered during this process. Like the fact that neither my brother nor my husband ever actually gave me a photo. (I decided that their lack of participation could also be part of the process and then went ahead and made paintings for them anyway.) Beyond that I learned a lot about my relationships with my family.

I’ve been toying with the way to take this work to the next level. Or which aspect to continue with. I’ve begun a series of grid based works on paper that resulted from my thoughts that these works should be larger. I’d like to also investigate the opposite possibility. At the same time I’d like to paint images given to me by strangers. And not just any strangers, but strangers who are willing to pay for the work. Does this element of commission sully the work? Does art become less valuable because you WANT someone to buy it? Certainly it is MORE valuable, or should I say HAS VALUE, if someone desires to buy it. Or am I mistaken, are all the paintings in the Met free??

On one level my interest here is in making smaller grid based paintings, in oil, on linen. In addition these are paintings that involve me in someone else’s perspective. This is a longstanding interest of mine- it motivates much of what I read and watch on tv- and of course my desire to travel. The only thing that will unite these individuals is their willingness to pay me $3,000 to make 24”x36” oil on linen painting of a their photograph.