The reason for your art

For anyone that knows me you know that I do not enjoy writing nor am I any good at it. Try reading through my diary and you’ll feel about as confused as I do most the time. My self-diagnosed ADD thoughts run randomly through my head and unfortunately that’s how it comes out on paper. So it’s no surprise that while writing my last blog about Solitude I found myself off topic about halfway through. Frustrated I started to cut out this section but realized it would actually be a good blog all on its own…

…Somewhere along the line I decided to name the piece ‘Solitude’ (the Thesaurus has become my best friend now). I love seeing a tree out in an open field all by itself. My painting was bringing me to that field. In college I had a teacher who told us there needs to be a reason for everything you do in art… a reason the piece of work was created… a reason why you used a certain color… a reason this line or that line was added, or in this case why a border was included. I disagree… strongly. I didn’t start Solitude with some deep, profound meaning. I had an idea in my head and wanted to put it on canvas. If you want, I can make-up some philosophical BS…. The tree is me, I’m alone, and I’m trying to break free from the walls I’ve built up. Make sense? Does that suddenly make my painting better?

That’s not what the piece really meant to me though. I just enjoyed sitting down and creating the vision I had in my mind. And that’s what every artist should do. Create your work because you like it, because of the vision in your head or maybe you DO have some deep meaning behind it. The most important thing is that you enjoy creating your work and once it’s complete (for the time being) you’ll love sitting and staring at it…. And hopefully if you’re selling it, someone else loves sitting and staring at it too. ;)