I try to achieve emotional balance in the art making process. In some way or another, each piece is closely related to my conscience through content, technique, and/or composition. As I explore the relationship between the mind, hand, emotion, and medium, I continue to develop my own recognizable style. I work to reveal the guise of my emotions across all mediums, as my artwork reflects the sometimes unresolved nature of thought.
I believe that the art making process is far more important than the final piece. It is within said process that one discovers the particular lens in which his or her world is viewed. As I was studying 20th Century Art History last fall, I was particularly intrigued by a SolLewitt gallery at the Walker Art Center, after reading the following quote that was printed on the wall in the exhibit:
“The draftsman and the wall enter a dialogue. The draftsman becomes bored but later through the meaningless activity finds peace or misery. The lines on the wall are the residues of this process. Each line is as important as each other line. All of the lines become one thing. The viewer of the lines can see only lines on a wall. They are meaningless. That is art.”
- SolLewitt
SolLewitt was able to clearly identify that the final product, the “artwork”, is simply the evidence of the art—the actual art is that which cannot be seen, but rather experienced only by the artist. In this quotation SolLewitt refers to the draftsman as the creator of the art- he who is employed to follow the instruction for a wall drawing, traditional “artist” or not. However, in this instance the draftsman becomes the artist as he experiences the “peace or misery”, and thus creates the art through his emotion of the process. The world is thus seen through the lens of instruction-the draftsman is simply doing what he is told, but is creating an art that he may or may not recognize other than the wall drawings. I found that this analysis of art clearly outlined what it was that I was unable to piece together about my own work— that feeling of tediousness, frustration, meditation, focus or enjoyment is the art- without that there is nothing more than a mixture of material on a surface. I am beginning to work on a piece over and over again until I am able to resolve what it is in my own mind that brought me to the practice in the first place with this idea that the artwork is being made beyond an aesthetically pleasing trophy to hang on a wall somewhere.
I have also been greatly influenced by Yves Klein’s idea of submerging himself into the void to create art. I particularly admired his piece, “Dialogue With Self”. It was played in an empty room at the Walker Art Center, and in it Klein said:
“…beyond this affective, waking, extra lucid reverie visited by the spirit…this reverie, which in short…is universal, but it is human; and so if I strip myself bare the way people will live naked in the architecture of air, because there’ll be no more intimacy, we’ll know what the others think. Everything the others do, maybe, another intimacy will come then, from further, still further, something we can’t yet even form an idea of today, which exists; and what’s strange is, to think that beyond that there exists something else still greater and vaster…”
-Yves Klein
I realized Klein was expressing the importance of going beyond usual boundaries in order to find any sort of significant emotional balance-similar to what I was looking for. There will be “no more intimacy” because without original thought we will all know everything about each other, and thus a balance will not be necessary as there will be nothing to throw us off. Without the void there would be no need for the draftsman. I have always been told that, “you need to know the rules before you can break them”, so I do find it imperative to practice technical skills along with focusing on an emotional exploration- that of stepping into the void. However, as I am beginning to increase my comfort level with the traditional “rules”, or techniques of art, I want to take the next step—breaking the rules. I want to work with this idea of stepping into the void, further exploring art theory and working to minimize the more traditional approach of art that exists in my work-that of replicating “real life”, identifiable content- and move into a more theory-based style of work.
