I’ve read a number of artist’s blogs, visited a number of artist’s websites, scrolled through many artists Facebook and Instagram pages and for the most part all of them are carefully curated to show a very together person who is highly creative and successful usually telling others how to become successful. It is quite different from the lives of the artists I know including myself. Perhaps when we are out in public (even if it is virtual public) we are supposed to be very guarded and show the world only what we want them to see – hide the warts. As I have evolved as an artist over the years I know that I must go deep into a very personal space and examine those warts in order to create paintings that have meaning and may even connect with someone else. I think that is about taking risks. I’m certainly not going to show every painting or drawing I do. I’m only going to show the ones that I find most successful, but that doesn’t mean every piece I do is good. Far from it. In fact I would be very leery of an artist whose work was always good. I think it would show me that the artist did not take risks and only stayed with what they knew and played it safe.
I went to see an exhibition by Degas once at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton. Edmonton is sometimes referred to as a northern outpost, and so shows by artists of this caliber are rare. Everyone was excited to see the show and many people bought tickets in advance. I too got caught up in anticipating viewing some great works by an Impressionist master. As I walked through the exhibit, I caught myself thinking, “Ok so this is what great works look like? After all it is Degas.” But soon I realised that actually at least half of the works on display were not particularly good at all by anyone’s standard. Some were poorly composed, the colour was very muddy on others, proportions on some of the figures were way off. At first I was mad about the whole exhibition, “Why are they showing such second rate work? Just because it is Degas doesn’t mean they are great.” And then it dawned on me that this exhibition showed me that Degas was just a human being who liked to make art. Some of his work does reach the level of masterpiece, but a lot of it was just the steps and risks he took that enabled him to get there.
This is my blog on my website so I will write what I want. It will not always be filled with nuggets of wisdom (that will most likely be rare), but I will do my very best to keep it honest. As they say, “warts and all.” I’m sure there will be times where I reveal too much and it may turn you off of me, but what I hope is that it give you and me a glimpse into my creative process and thereby help me learn and take more risks. I hope my words encourage you to make art and take risks and know that none of us are anywhere near perfect. It is when we take risks and fail, that we grow.
