The Pleasure at Being the Cause Icy Off the Press

A new book, yawn

Welcome to small town! I want to share with my international Steemian human brothers and sisters a tale on the futility of art inspired by wonder and natural philosophy born into 21st century U.S.A. It’s a very short diatribe, though it might serve as a life-changing cautionary tale to any would-be artist stranded in a similar land of stylish middle class drab and boredom. It is this:

No one close enough to you to touch cares about your art.

Pin it on Facebook. So when you make a post to family and friends about the new book you wrote and published, maybe only your mother-in-law may feel the social pressure to “Like” it.

It is a mystery why creative accomplishment in Smalltown, U.S.A. is met by the strange, strange truth of silent social rejection. Oh, but if I was a professional hockey player with no teeth and stinky skin creases...

Here is an excerpt from the book headed by my favorite painting last week at the residency, and finished with Lou Reed and John Cale’s “Smalltown”. Thank you Steem for the international attention.

Imaginary Bird and Mammals, and a Real Snake 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16"

I Am Not Going to Try To Sell You a Painting

Art is rapidly confusing me. I don’t know where I’m going with this modern day painting repetition. Is it a pastime for the delusional dreamer, outcast, rank failure of the social experiment? I can’t even tell if I’m a creative person any more, or if I ever was. And does it matter? Am I trying to impress, entertain, self-elevate? This morning I awoke with the desire to walk west with a backpack and good sneakers. But then I immediately thought about my pill regimen, and if I’d get too dizzy on the road after my heart got pumping. And then my mind jumped to the mountains and a rustic cabin without any people around. But that will cost money. Lots of money. What could I do to make lots of money? I am useless to the real world except as day laborer, or ticket-taker, elevator man, very short order cook… My wife is “working” upstairs as I write, as I am “working”, like any person is who is moving their fingers and toes and circulating blood. However, like billions of other human beings crummying up the planet, her work movements make money. She’s invested in the system, and it pans out, financially, although there are many trade-offs. For one, she’s locked down geographically, indoors, in perpetuity, while the brilliant spring sunshine greening the trees in the breeze is relegated to evenings and weekends—but only if clouds play nice. There is no walking west, nor a mountain cabin in our future.
Unless I sell a painting for an exorbitant sum. Then hope sneaks its little weasel nose in on reality, and I rise to levels of self-aggrandizement that only the great delusional fools of history have achieved.
You might already know how I price my work. There’s an equation I use that I think is fair and could be universal if we exterminated the billionaires.

But I rarely follow it. Especially when it hangs in a Plebeian gallery, all nicely framed and ready to share the mark-up spoils with the business owner—all for the generous rental space of painted wallboard so that equally confused passersby can view and judge and never buy, subjectively.
I give away paintings, or ask for a silver dollar, or bow my head way low like a beggar while taking money from a nice person who thought my equation a fair assessment of work by a living artist. I literally feel a rush of shame overcome me whenever I make the money exchange. That’s just not right. My gut instinct swears that art for sale ain’t art worth selling.
Oh and then there are those cheeky self-promoting painters who sell prints for $500 to middle class home decorators. That self-assurance makes my head spin, especially if the scam works for them. “How do they let their minds get away with it?” If that’s “the business”, then I want no part. But then I’m not so delicate either. You pay me $500 for something I made, and I’ll throw an old-fashioned ditch digging into the bargain. I like a good bit of pain to justify my white, (paint-splashed) collar work.
That’s the artist as masochist, and a big part of why I am leaving the world behind. More on this in a bit.
Art is not for sale, but we make it so because kings of old and billionaires of now have turned it into a market hobby amongst themselves, buying and selling to see who’s best. Museums and “high end” city galleries play along, and the peasant painters continue to pine for recognition pretending their time will come. Yet we all know that for every single artist breakthrough, there are 10,000 left begging. Which, to me, means that the system is wildly dysfunctional. Not even a system, really. Might as well have the artist collect grass clippings and try to sell packaged clumps of it at a Major League baseball game. One lucky vendor in a million might discover a millionaire who’ll buy his grass, ironically, in order to impress another millionaire. Then the two sociopaths take it back up to their box seat and sniff it. However, all remaining grass-clipping farmers will be left out time and again, and better find another use for their grass, or quit altogether, and get in line to choose another way to beg before the billionaires.
Art is not for sale. Not as a commodity anyway. The creative act does not end with the last coat of varnish. The “buyer” needs to continue the process, which will never see an end if the art has any intrinsic value. That’s a huge burden to put on someone for taking art expression from another and shouldering it. A kind of love act that can’t cost a cent. The new soul responsible for the life of your expression better love it, or you enough to manage a wall hanging for a lifetime. The middleman money is just an old-fashioned ritual and an annoying third wheel to take on any art venture.
So I am getting out of “the business”. I hope to find the courage to officially break away and challenge myself to daily practice a life worth living. Time to abandon the Internet, and its unsocial social media. Maybe I’ll write letters again and send them with paintings because I shall always express myself gratuitously. I want to feel good and take in the beauty of what life I got left in me. I desire a wonder that stimulates, and mustn’t always end up expressed as a painting that strangers likelikelikelikelikelikelike in 2.5 seconds or less. Sometimes I want more than anything to like you, and for you to like me, and I realize that can only be nurtured through society. So I’m not going recluse, just pre-Internet, like Thoreau or Kurt Cobain. Or even like that unknown fella you never heard of because he shut up when the time was right.
I plan to keep my studio and myself seated in it. I might even make it a local hot spot with an outdoor summer concert series and Thursday night garden parties. I live in beautiful suburbia, beside a Great Lake, and the sun is shining today. Just walk around back, and look for the Fuel Gallery sign. I’ll keep a bottle of good bourbon by the door. And if it’s a nice day, we’ll sit in the shade and sip. Peruse the studio for something to take home, and we’ll meet again as soon as you are ready.