PAINTING

The joints on my right hand always ache.
I’ve been painting a long time.
Lately, it’s been mostly on walls in homes or offices.

I stopped exhibiting a number of years ago. I don’t know exactly why.
On the one hand, the sheer cost of exhibiting out of town is enormous. Competitive shows have an entrance fee and I don’t quite see the point of them.
Galleries have been largely uninterested in my work. Too modern for traditional places and too traditional for contemporary galleries.
Artists often put up little shows with openings attended by friends and families and thereafter by wind and light and silence. Nothing wrong with that.

In the “rarified” smarty-pants world of up-to-date contemporary art, painting is mostly considered yesterday’s news. Much of what manages to make it through the critical gauntlet depends on enormous physical scale to succeed. Performance, digital media, installation - these are “Truthier”. Simplistic ideas manage to find acceptance when they are clothed in currently passable formal structures.

The most annoying phrase in all of contemporary exhibit world: “site-specific”.

I have always drawn and painted whatever the hell I have wanted to. I have had my illusions about careerism, certainly, but I have also maintained a level of integrity, honesty, and mystery that is real to me...not feigned. I have been lazy at times and not as prolific as many of my contemporaries. But I have continued on and have a small body of work that I stand by. What will happen to it when I am gone is anyone’s guess. But I imagine there will be some exasperation by those faced with my studio mess.

People like to look at paintings and tell you what you “should or could have done”. It is the worst thing to do to an artist. Many years ago a friend hooked me up with an ex-curator at the Contemporary Art Center here in town. He came and looked at my paintings. Pointing at a section of a work which played-off a painting of a sphinx by Poussin, he exclaimed: “Now this...is idiotic”. He said this because in his mind he was learned and experienced and I was naive. The truth is that he was an imbecile. But I remained polite and didn’t tell him what I thought of his expertise.

I watched a 2007 documentary on the painter Alice Neel last night, directed by her grandson. It was memorable as well as tough to watch because it zeros in on the wonder and exuberance but also the sheer difficulty of living life as an artist.

It is worth it and for many of us....there is no other way.