A Year of FridaysPart IV: AprilI've been thinking a lot about canvas lately. Not
a canvas, mind you, but canvas itself, as a material. I had fine teachers in school, but very few of them were young, and almost none of them were doing original or forward-thinking work. They were, by and large, older, more traditional artists, and as a result, I learned how to do things the old way. I learned how to stretch a canvas just so, how to size it and prime it the same way painters had been doing for centuries. I was so concerned about what was going on the material, I never gave much thought to the material itself.
To this day, it goes against my instints to paint on unprimed, or even unmounted canvas. I don't naturally think to let the material shine through, to celebrate it just as I would the charcoal or the paint. But more and more, I find myself wanting to express a connection to this remarkable, deeply historied cloth. I want it to make as much of a statement as any other element of my work.
I was thrilled, then, to see so many artists celebrating that very idea in their own work, on this warm, sunny First Friday. One was working with silk, another with wood, but the idea is the same. "This is an object," the work says. "Not a simple image, a two-dimensional representation of something else, but a thing in and of itself, and part of the great family of art." Not a new idea, of course-- that notion was the driving force for most of the art of the last century-- but one so vital that it cannot be restated enough.
In the gallery below me, a painter had dedicated an entire show to a single theme, a sort of experiment with color and medium. Not a successful one, in my opinion, but I at least admired the notion. It made me think of the countless critiques I sat through in college, looking at one bad piece after another. It occurred to me that the common factor to all of them, regardess of subject or style, was simplicity. Good art is never simple. It has layer upon layer, built up slowly over time. Even work that appears simple is not; that is only an illusion. A good piece cannot be completed in an afternoon. Too much of what I see out there looks like it was produced because the artist was bored, and the materials were available, and really, why not? I've never found art for its own sake to be especially rewarding. Without a purpose, without effort, it's just masturbation.
Most galleries have some work that stays up all the time until it's sold. At a gallery down the street, one of these pieces, a collage with painted and written elements, is one I've seen and admired many times before. If I had the money, I might buy it myself. Yet despite so many viewings, when I saw it tonight, I noticed a whole new element, which completely changed my understanding of it. It was such a small moment, but such a happy one. I love being surprised like that.
Coming back home at the end of the night, I made a decision. Some First Friday, months from now, I'm going to open my own doors. I don't see what would stop me. I have the space, I have people who would help, and the traffic is there already. More importantly, I need to show again. It's been a very long time, and the experience would be invaluable to me. Perhaps it could be a celebration, a reward for completing my portfolio: I'll finish the work, take slides, then throw open the doors and try to sell some of it. Or maybe not even sell, maybe that's not the point. Maybe it's just enough to say "Here I am, here's what I can do."
Now I just have to figure out what that is.
