Killing children of a lesser God. When a work of art gets destroyed.

Ask any artist who has dedicated their life to the pursuit of art and they will tell you that their creations are their children.
How then does it feel when one of their creations gets destroyed?

I have been involved in the creation of art for as long as I can remember and therefore I would say art was an integral part of my identity. And after a lifetime of creating art, in my case in the form of paintings, I have learned that, the art I create has an identity and life all of its own. It becomes a living entity.

My old university teacher once told me;
"The sign of a masterpiece is when you can not argue against it.
You cannot remove or add anything to it. It simply speaks for itself.
Thus exists in its own right"

After a lifetime of living and working as an artist I can now tell you that he was right. 

What has become clear to me is that the act of creation is an act of self sacrifice.
For in order to create life in one´s art, one has to give up part of one´s own life.
For only life can create another life.
In this way, it is why dedicated artists view their art as their "living" children.

But what exactly does an artist mean when they say their art is living?  Is this just nonsense?

Mark Rothko once said:“A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky and cruel act to send it out into the world"
              

Leonardo Da Vinci carried his painting of the Mona Lisa everywhere he went. He never let it out of hi sight and refused to ever sell it.

The last living moments of the great 16th century painter, Caravaggio were spent running after a ship that was sailing away with his work on board. The trauma of this was said to have killed him for he died later the same day. 

Two huge pieces of marble were delivered to the Vatican in Rome to be used as pillars for the entrance. When Michelangelo saw these marble pillars it is said he saw "David" inside one of them. He fought tooth and nail with authorities to stop them from using this one piece so that he could: "Bring forth David to life".

The renaissance genius Raphael often referred to his paintings as "My little children"

Clearly there is something real is going on here. If not, then Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Raphael, Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko, and other geniuses are all insane.

If this is true, why would an artist destroy their own work?

I will confess to you now that I have destroyed probably hundreds of my own paintings. However this does not mean I have killed my children.
The reason being is that the paintings I destroyed were not alive.

The English painter Francis Bacon was notorious for destroying his paintings and actually paid people to destroy them properly so that there was nothing left at all.

Way back in 1980, when I was a first year art student, Francis Bacon came to our college and I asked him directly why he did this? He replied: "The paintings I destroyed were never alive.
I would never destroy a living painting for that would be an act of murder" 

I smiled when he told me this for that was exactly how I felt about art myself.
This encouraged me to continue on the path of becoming an artist.

And so when I, or any artist destroys a painting it means that then painting is not alive.
It means, I somehow or other I had failed to bring it to life.
It did not convey emotion, it did not breath, it did not have a soul. It was therefore merely an object, and as such I simply destroy it and start again. I feel nothing about doing this. 

But what about when a painting/work of art is destroyed
or damaged by accident, in an accident, or by malicious means?

Imagine owning a famous masterpiece worth millions of dollar$ and then you damage it by accident?

This is exactly what happened to Las Vegas casino billionaire Steve Wynn in 1997.
Steve Wynn was a rather colorful and energetic character and as such he would often wage his arms around when he talked. One day at one of his famous parties, he was showing off his prized possession of one of his two Picasso paintings he owned.
The one in question was The portrait of Marie-Thérèse.  This painting was regarded to be one of Picasso´s greatest works and Wynn paid $48 million dollar$ for it.
Wynn was waving his arms around as usual and suddenly his left elbow smashed right into the masterpiece taring a big hole right in the center of it.
"Oh shit, look what I've done," was apparently the phrase he used.
Apparently he carried on with the party as though nothing had happened even making a joke saying; "Im glad I did it and not one of you"   he said to his guests.

However, a close friend later disclosed that Wynn was ill for weeks afterwards.

Later in a press conference Wynn confessed about the incident;
"This has nothing to do with money. The money means nothing to me. It's that I had this painting in my care and I've damaged it."
He paid a fortune to have it "sewn together" but it was impossible to restore it to how it was.

In 2006 one of my own paintings was completely and deliberately destroyed by someone who was a collector of my work. 

This is the painting below. It was called "Love´s Reflection"  - watercolor 30cm x 45cm

Thank God I made a scan of the painting before I sold it and therefore this image is all I have left of this painting, which was one of my own personal favorites.
Recently I have been discussing with a friend about digital art and art made in the traditional way.
Now I ask you looking at this painting, which would you rather have, a print or the original?

The painting itself is all about how we perceive love from our own perspective. 

Look at the image, what do we see?
A beautiful woman standing naked looking at herself in the mirror in a room that appears to be in an abandoned house. Now look closer, the clues are there.

First of all I hope you can see that what we are looking at the woman through the eyes of the viewer. Who is this person? We can assume it must be her lover.
So then perhaps they are lovers who have no where to go in order to be alone?
And so they find an old abandoned house, and in this house there is a room, and in this room there is an old bed. They begin kissing and one thing leads to another. Perhaps they had sex. 

But did they have sex or did they make love?
It all depends upon your perspective.



From the perspective of the viewer the woman is a voluptuous mature woman.
His eyes scan her curvaceous body, a body he has just been intimately involve with.
A woman he has just had sex with.

Now look at the face of the woman in the mirror.
Suddenly we become privileged to get a glimpse of how this woman-being sees herself.
And what does she see?
Here we see the face of innocence, not that of a mature woman.
Therefore perhaps this man is her first lover.
She looks at herself and she asks;
"What does he see in me, this man who has just made love to me?"
Thus in one painting we see two perspectives of love.
This is the meaning of this painting.
It was the first in a series of paintings in this style called "The Woman-being".

I painted this in 2003 just as I was starting out as trying to earn a living as a full time artist.
One year later a collector came into my gallery and bargained me down on the price.
I was struggling to pay the bills back then so I agreed and let it go much cheaper than I wanted. But that´s just how it is.

Jump ahead three years and the same collector came back.

However something had dramatically changed with this person.
To cut a long story short he had become a drunk.
He stunk of whisky, he smelled of piss and he could hardly stand up.
He had somehow become down on his luck and now he needed money and he now wanted me to buy the painting back.
Seeing the state of him I felt sorry for the guy and I was also glad to get the opportunity to get the painting back. So I offered to buy the painting back for the same price that I sold it.

However, the guy wanted more saying that now I was more established my work was fetching higher prices. This was true but I was not willing to pay more than I sold to him for.

I realize now that talking with a drunken man was not wise and something I regret and the consequences are something will have to live with for the rest of my life.

Anyway, the guy swore at me, spat at me and then stormed out.
I told him to perhaps sleep on the matter and that that the offer still stands.

Two weeks went by and he had not come back so I figured he had sobered up
and either forgotten all about it or changed his mind.

Then one the Saturday of that ending week a man came in to see me explaining that he was the brother of this drunk. He tells me that on that very evening after his drunk brother had the confrontation with me he goes back to his apartment and destroys my painting.

Two days later he goes to visit his brother finds him dead on the floor holding a whiskey bottle and the frame of my painting smashed to pieces.
The actual painting he had obviously lit with a cigarette lighter.

To say I was somewhat stunned would be a vast understatement.
My feelings were all over place on the matter.
On one hand I felt sorry for the poor guy and on the other hand one of my children had been destroyed. I mean, how was I supposed to deal with that?

To this day I am still uncertain of how I feel about the whole matter.
I guess if there is life after death and we get to meet an angel or even Jesus,
it will be then I will find out how I am judged.

Thank you for reading and for visiting my blog and I wish you a warm welcome back next time