the truth behind the gold

Over the last month, my studio has looked like this...

And somehow...  that's turning into this... 

The process is quite obvious... smears of red and black, sketches of volcanoes and prepping canvases easily progress into wildlife drawings...
​well maybe not..

My studio is in another split personality period. On one side I'm working on a series of paintings inspired by the Earth's living breathing heart - Volcanoes. And on the other side, I'm inspired by the encounters I have had with the wildlife of the southwest, so I'm drawing portraits of the different characters I have met. 

The volcano paintings are abstract - with a little twist (more on that later) and the animal drawings are a bit more traditional. I imagine many mixed media composition artists go through this kind of black and white type of inspiration. Some days, spreading paint on a canvas focusing primarily on color, texture, and line/shape is moving and necessary -- other days accurate proportions and value are crucial. Each series is going to make their public in-person debut in March, so I'm kind of working fast to meet deadlines and working on each series on top of each other. Being able to bounce between abstraction one day to traditional the next (or by the hour) can be a tricky thing. When your mind/inspiration/focus is set in one way but your intention is to make the other style, you tend to get mud. Which is why some of the volcano paintings look more realistic or get lost and over worked - and some of the drawings end with a few smudges and a couple circles indicating eyes and then lots of frustrating pencil marks scribbled all over them.. This has brought me to a realization, something that I think art history has hidden from inspiring new artists...

Not everything an artist makes is a masterpiece, some days are just off days. Other days we were going for something else, and clearly made crucial mistakes because we weren't focused or in the right mindset. And that's okay. Not every work of art an artist makes is made public because not every work of art is great - or even good. Even the Masters like Picasso, Degas, or Leonardo Da Vinci made bad art. It's true. The bad work just doesn't make it into the exhibitions, or museum collections, or the art history books so it appears that everything thing a Master artist created was gold.. but that just isn't the case. 

Seems like common sense doesn't it? But think back to your first time wandering around your favorite art museum - that feeling of awe, that "I could never be that good" feeling overwhelmed you, didn't it? Well, the truth is, we all started somewhere. Even Mozart had to learn where C# was. And that, those learning lessons, we - artists - hide them. We're embarrassed by them, and instead we flaunt our great works of art as if everything we touch turns into gold. I know how intimating that looks, I know how that feels when you are first starting out. And -- I know how it feels when you are actively creating - perhaps under pressure because of a deadline or your own desire to create great work every time-- and you stumble upon this brilliant technical artistic creative artist, and those negative thoughts pass through your mind.... "I'll never be this good." I feel it every time I see another artist's website, at an exhibition, or when I'm flipping through one of my many art history textbooks. I feel it, I live it... 
​
The truth is, you are. You can't see their mistakes, their sketches, their bad days, or their scraps -- you see their gold. And you should, it's inspiring you to push past your own mistakes, scraps, etc. To keep working at it, to focus, to listen to what initially inspired you, and most of all, to be true to your artistic voice -- and then, your studio becomes filled with... 

Gold.