Time v. Money v. Life and Death
The thing is, is that starting this kind of work at age 45, well, it’s a bit of a race. If I’d started fine art per se at age 25, or 15, I’d a) never have done text-art in the way I am now and b) hmn, um, something else. Ah yes, I’d have a full body of work behind me.
So starting at age 45 there’s a few things to consider:
1. I work full-time. That’s the rub here, I just can’t put in 60 hours a week as I’d like to. Why 60 hours?
2. Because per above I don’t have a body of art, I just have a massive amount of work in my head that needs to get out.
And this is the issue, well that and money because it seems my work requires a constant stream of money for materials and materials and rent and materials. Did I mention lots of paint? Think ‘materials.’ But time, time is the thing that I don’t have and am also fighting against. The post before this, Ya Ha Ha Motherf*ckers!, I’d originally written about a certain kind of pride in finding after so much effort a style that works for me both physically and metaphorically. True true. But I’d also written about how one reinvents themselves, how I’ve had to reinvent myself over and over and over as I’ve gotten older, in part paying for the sins of my stupid youth, but also because it’s just flat-out taken me a good number of decades to figure out who the hell I am and what it is I actually want to achieve in this life. It’s a strange thing to come to that understanding, a kind of vice-grip of mortality wrapped hard around your neck constantly squeezing. For some I suppose it’s liberating, but for me it just means more work. Well ok.
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Above are two tester panel pics in process. I’m beginning to work with color and among today’s many admissions is the fact that I don’t understand color. Black and white, paper in typer, oh yeah! I also don’t understand depth beyond a horizon line, but I totally get texture. So stick to my strengths and make something of it, eh?
Below are two close ups of the tester panels. I really dig how the letters are breaking up and beginning to bleed. The great part about all of this is that I know how I got here, I know how to recreate what I’ve made and so with each new test comes a greater understanding of how things work and the possibilities therein. Hot damn, right?
Whoa! Can’t wait to see it in person. Now comes a bizarre thought. The last pic of your panel (brown and white) just reminds me of a chocolate bar.
Akane said this on April 16, 2011 at 6:27 am |
I think you would be dealing with a lack of time even if you had started making art at age 5, because you would have evolved and so would your style. You would have more art behind you, yes, but would the art that you made at age 25 still speak volumes about who you are today?
Quality over quantity….and you definitely have some quality art happening.
ali said this on April 17, 2011 at 1:19 am |
Thanks Ali for the good words. True. Still, it would be nice to do this all over again and start from scratch at 5 or 15 or 25. It’s so easy to be like Hesse’s Siddhartha caught up in all the rigamarole only years later to wonder just what the hell you’d been doing all that time, or like the Kafka story where a man sits in a waiting room his entire life because he’d been told to, never once just daring to walk thru the door no matter the consequences. At some point, if we’re lucky, we’ll be lying in our deathbed and the question will come up, ‘Was it worth it?’ To which I’d like to say, ‘Yeah, well, towards the end it turned out alright.’
The Devil Jumped On My Head said this on April 17, 2011 at 5:37 pm |