Ever since I’ve started looking through my old IB Art workbooks, I’ve been inspired to work on my own little premise of self-exploration. I’ve always resented the notion that art must only shock-I find that to be the half-hearted approach to what I consider an experience rather than an occupation or hobby. Don’t get me wrong, I doodle like a poodle (no, that’s not supposed to make any sense, but, I can rhyme. Are you jealous? Irrelevant. … I should stop typing in these parenthasis) but I prefer to support the notion that art, especially (allegedly?) in such a liberated, emotionally intelligent world that is also intellectually rampant must mean a lot more than shock value. If the intent of it is to shock, then I find it boring, even generic. So someone’s body of work is purposely meant to be shocking. And what?
I can only believe that art is personal, that each piece must offer a glimpse of what the artist feels, thinks, battles, enjoys, lives, loves, and sunders only to rebuild.
…Don’t I love it when I’m feeling romantic about abstract ideas. Anyway, I found some quotes that better explain my attitudes about something, which I can claim passion for, which says a lot, considering my only other passion is gaming, and then everything else is kind of boring. :P
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
-Henry Ward Beecher
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way-things I had no words for.
-Georgia O’Keeffe
Art is the triumph over chaos.
-John Cheever
Art is the struggle to understand.
-Audrey Foris
All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.
-Eckhart Tolle
Art is not hype.
Anyway, I’ve decided to journal one page a day in an 800×800 canvas and then add a “workbook” directory later. I’ll mention that here when it goes live. Reading through my old workbook made me miss it, and I forgot how liberating it was, despite my ever so predictable, angsty teenager thoughts that crudely marked their scars on those pages.