Finding your own artistic voice is a little like drilling for oil, or discovering a vein of gold or silver. It is dangerous (synonymous with adventurous), sometimes dark, often exciting and interesting. The labor is all done on the inside. In the depths of our own souls.
It is difficult to be honest with yourself, not to mention with others. An artist puts his heart out for everyone to see. He learns to take all responses as equal. If someone knows his language, they relate to and enjoy it. In art, the conversation is in the language of image, and symbols. What does a color mean to you? What does line say in its simplest form? We have to do the work it takes to become our finest most honest selves.
We can do what is safe. Paint pretty pictures. We can become brilliant at copying other artists’ work, or we can tell our own story. We can find out what colors we are. We learn to mix the colors, to exaggerate where the composition needs the intensity. We learn to take risks, to experiment and we go on from one frame to the next. People say to me all the time that my art is happy. I’m surely not happy all the time. I have learned to live with a glass that is half full, not half empty but I am also dark at times. I have chosen to paint night scenes a lot. Darkness holds mysteries and magic and secrets. I love what it holds and I embrace it. When I paint I get into the feeling of what I am painting. I like to breathe the air, to imagine the sounds of the scene. I long to be where I am imagining so I paint happy, positive. Because this is where I want to be and believe that if I visualize it well enough, I will be. This is my story, the experiences I have had in life have all contributed in one way or another to a positive point of view. We only have so much time here. We can choose to make the best possible use of it.
A line that I have begun to use as my creed is that “I get to paint light’s story”. A statement which is both technically and metaphysically true. As we learn to paint from still life or outside, we train ourselves to observe what light is doing. Without a record of the light, the painting is dull. It is light’s journey across an apple’s surface that enables the artist to paint with the illusion of shape. For every change of plane, there is a change in the value of the light so merely driving down the road or taking a walk will make us a better artist. We get the privilege of reading light’s story. After we see and become familiar with it, we can pull it out of our storehouse and paint with it.
This is where the life of a painting is.
