Facing The Wall

 I've talked before about "the wall", but not the different reasons for hitting it. Sometimes it's just not knowing your subject well enough, sometimes it's a change of direction, and sometimes it's losing interest in the subject or the painting itself. 

          A friend told me he loses interest in his art if it takes more than an hour or two to complete. For him, time is the wall. This is not a bad thing, it's good that he recognizes this aspect of how he has to work to maintain the quality he needs in his work. He has excellent drawing skills and a great sense of design. He limits his palette to just the essential colors, his mixing of colors is quite masterful. He has prepared himself quite well for doing his work in the amount of time he has before his interest fades. He avoids the wall by completing his painting quickly. He accepts whatever he ends up with, good or bad, he moves on to his next piece. 

        To overcome this short interest span he spends time drawing and painting the human figure from life. This practice helps with his quick study of all subjects he wishes to tackle. Though he may devote only an hour or two to doing a painting of an old truck, he has spent hours honing his drawing skills and his observational skills drawing from a live model. Each one of us artists must recognize our own pitfalls that build our walls and focus on ways to overcome them.

       Time for some is that wall, but for some, it is not a factor at all.  Whether we take a couple hours to complete a piece or a year to complete a piece each artist needs to work through their own wall or find ways around it.  Subjects maybe incompatible with our medium resulting in a loss of vision for our finished piece. We fight and fight forcing ourselves to work though blindly not knowing what the real problem is. Are the colors we laid out right? How well do we know our medium? Are the brushes right for the ground we are working on? 

       The more we learn the less we seem to know.   

Reminds Us We Are Human

 National Endowment for Arts. Every so often comes a plea for people to write their congressman asking them not to cut funding for the NEA. Up popped two petitions the other day on Facebook asking for signatures to let congress know we the people want the NEA funded. I read some of the comments attached to these pleas and was surprised to find not every artist is behind this organization. Several comments were from artists who had never benefitted from the NEA. They felt the NEA only funded weird art and so they saw no benefit in keeping them around. 

     I remember the big flap over the Mapplethorpe Exhibition in Cincinnati. Congress, led by congressman Jesse Helms, was in a todo over funding of the NEA because of 7 controversial photos in the exhibition. I could be wrong, but the crowds for that show were huge and art museums across the country reported increases in attendants during that controversy. I noticed an increase in sales with my own work and my subjects were far from Mapplethorpe's . 

      The NEA funds all the arts from ballets to rock concerts, from movies to small theater groups. If you watch public television you probably have seen programs funded by the NEA. They're not going to be able to fund every struggling artist but in some way every struggling artist benefits from the NEA. Art, in all its forms, enlightens everyone's life. A statue of Robert E. Lee in the town square put pride in a man's chest and a spring to his step. It was an artist who created that statue. The logo on the Falcon's helmet was created by an artist. How many people visit Mount Rushmore? Again the creation of an artist. Art can enlighten or offend, it reminds us we are human.  

      When Churchill was asked should the government shut down the arts during WWII his reply was. "Then what are we fighting for?"