Speaking of Art Blog

Made Me Look, pastel, 12x12", SOLD (commission)

This is my latest pastel painting.  I started it last week and finished it late this week.  When I was in the middle of creating it, the national US election happened.  Before the election, I had started posting progress pics of it on Facebook, like I usually do.  But right smack in the middle of my painting, the election results came rolling in and totally deflated me.  I was suddenly not in any mood to post pics of my progress.  In fact, I had some real motivational problems with continuing to work on the painting at all.  I felt flattened, depressed.  Also, timing is everything when it comes to posting pics of artwork on Facebook.  It wasn’t the right time to post progress pics of a sunshiny sunflower painting when half the country was grieving.  Nope, not happening.

But there was something else quietly gnawing at me, much more fundamental than bad timing and it made me stop in my tracks and ponder it on a much deeper level.  So, pardon me for getting all philosophical, but here goes.  Over the past 8-10 years I’ve seen too many people get sucked into the addictive and convincing mis- and disinformation cycle that presents a fake world to them as being totally true and real.  It is downright scary what people are willing to believe as truth when it comes to social media’s reporting of events and famous figures in our country.  And then there’s the whole AI debate besides, where you can’t even tell on social media sometimes when a photo is real or just AI generated.

Then it hit me yesterday:  Wait, what about my artwork?  Is that fake too?  It really is just a bunch of pigmented dust on a piece of paper.  Which made me ask myself: What the heck am I doing?  I’m creating something every bit as fake as social media’s fake news.  I felt like I had slid down a brain-bending rabbit hole that I had not foreseen at all.  I wound up writing on Facebook that I was not going to post more progress pics of my sunflower painting because I didn’t feel like it.  While that was true, I was also having a sort of existential crisis in my mind at that point.  Am I part of the fake vs real barrage of info that we humans are facing every day?  Is artwork just another form of deception?  I mean, it’s not as real as a hug from my grandchild or a tasty homemade bowl of chicken soup or a butterfly landing on a sunflower just as I was about to snap a picture this fall….or is it?

But here’s what got me back to my easel.  You see, this painting was a commission and I was under contract to finish it.  Even though I was questioning my whole professional career choice, I did have to fulfill my art business obligation.  And so, I dragged myself out of bed the next morning and went back to work.  And that’s when I realized something.  Yes, I am an artistic magician who creates an illusion of 3-dimensionality on a flat surface, but that’s not fake.  Is it a lie?  No, it is not.  It is an imitation of reality.  It’s the best I can do with my pastel supplies to try to imitate reality, nature, the most beautiful and complex teacher and model I could possibly ask for.  Nature is truth, nature is real, nature doesn’t lie, nature doesn’t editorialize, nature tells it like it is.  My meager attempt at imitating that truth is as valid as I can make it.  And when my customer receives my work with an outburst of joy and appreciation, I know I have done the best that I can possibly do with my skills and creative talent to bare my soul and convey an honest, beautiful imitation of reality.  My artwork’s connection with the viewer is key and I’m succeeding; the connections are happening.

The next morning an artist friend of mine threw out a question to all of us artists on Facebook.  She asked us what we do when we are feeling depressed.  Do we paint or do we get outside in nature?  I replied, “Both.”  Nature IS my inspiration for my art.  It heals my body and mind and spirit.  Some artists like to do plein air artwork for that very reason.  I’m not a fan of plein air, but I have to take a walk outside every nice day or I’ll go crazy.  It literally quenches my creative thirst.  I have a small wooden sign on a shelf in our house that I see every day.  It reads,

INTO THE FOREST I GO,

TO LOSE MY MIND AND FIND MY SOUL

(John Muir)

Lord knows I will need to take plenty of walks in the coming days.  But I will also NEED to create, to try my best to imitate reality on a flat surface because more than ever the world NEEDS to view beauty and experience its healing power.  There may be suffering on the horizon for possibly millions of people in America in the coming years and it makes me sick just thinking about it.  Do I have my art creating work cut out for me?  Oh yes!  Is it my compelling responsibility to depict nature’s beautiful truth as best I can in my artwork?  Yes, I do believe it.  As an artist am I doing legitimate and necessary work right now?  Absolutely.  For real?  Yes, for real.  Whew, now put the blinders back on to the fake news and get back to work, Mary Ann.  There’s real honest truth-telling to be done.