My heart is bleeding.
The Bleeding Hearts have come to bloom in my garden.
Every now and then, I need a bleeding heart, someone to listen to my concerns whether they are insignificant or grandiose. I need someone to confess my secrets and speak of how I feel about them. I may have succeeded or failed through life but sometimes it is just good to have someone to listen and if trusted help me gain perspective on both. Fortunately, I have a trusted and highly valued analyst, a psychologist. Sadly, I don’t see her enough and there are times I wish I had a direct line, like the red-phone.
That’s how I feel today. I’m down in the dumps because of personal concerns surrounding my work and its production. I feel betrayed by the ignorance of youth and how in youth’s arrogance sometimes speaks without considering the deeper ramifications of their words. I’m not speaking of my youth here.
As an artist, I have spent most of my life just making what I feel a need to make without concentration on marketability, sales, or the other accolades of success. There are those amongst me who feel otherwise. That a work of art or a written passage only has merit if it’s being published or sold – if not it either is a failure or not work at all. What I mean is that the labour involved in writing for example, is not work to them unless it shows some kind of recognized value as in publication - payment.
I ask how many great works of art in all mediums have been ignored in the artists’ life only to be seen as masterpieces with time. Imagine Vincent Van Gogh’s regret when he visited his brother Theo's gallery in Paris to see that all his paintings were still there, stored in the storerooms of the gallery. Yes, he saw that as little 1% of the 800 or so works he made in his 10 years of being an artist had sold. It must have been very hard for him. Imagine then that when he went his brother said, well none has sold so you mustn’t be working hard enough or that you’re not really an artist until they sell. This didn’t happen to Vincent, or I don’t think so, although he did kill himself shortly there after. Anyway, it has happened to me.
I made a choice 30 years ago to pursue my work with integrity and not chase the dollar. I’ve had good luck with recognition of the work but none with sales. So just now, I’m being valued by those whose opinion should matter, that my endeavours are worthless or not even work unless my writings are published and that my works aren’t a success unless they sell. If it were just the outside world saying it, I’d have no problem dismissing it, but when it’s coming from people, that you thought would know better it’s like a knife cutting into my heart, my bleeding heart.
Please, I’m not naïve I know that bills must be paid, that’s why I garden for a living.
I don’t intend to write a long polemical argument as to why I think they have let me down but sadly, they have, and I feel alone as a result. When I ask if success is sales, then maybe I should take a survey of what images would sell best and paint those, would these be good art? Their answer is, well if it is not working then make change, adapt and yes, maybe you should take such a survey. You know why I cannot do this!
My cousin is a very respected and learned Psychiatrist whose wife is the Dean of Psychiatry at a University in the U.S.A., they told me that in a survey of what images relax patients in waiting room, the image of a boat moored in a bay gives the client peace and comforts them while they wait. Should I be doing paintings of boats?
I’m the kind of person that takes that above demographic and paints a pirate ship in that bay plundering all those contented and sleepily moored boats. I want to shake them up. I want them to take to sail and venture out of the bay to where danger, but also great joy awaits them, out in open sea – that’s what the damn boat was made for and not a tent on water. Sadly, that doesn’t sell and so to does my work not sell. This might be more telling about me and why I’ve never done well at selling art, most people just wanted to be herded into security and the lulled into a feeling of personal peace and affluence. Until a fully fueled passenger, jet comes crashing through your 50th storey office window and continues through the floor until only its engines go flying out the other side of the skyscraper as did happen at the World Trade Center in my beloved New York. If I could really paint, the shit that makes people fall into a trance neglecting to ask the obvious questions such as “Why do so many 3rd World People hate me this much that they’d fly a plane into this tower?” I’d wouldn’t be painting that shit anyway as I’m not a Social Realist as in Stalinist USSR-CCCP. No thanks, I leave that to the spin-doctors. However, let us not forget their message in this age and that seems to be fixed almost entirely in saying “Fear thy Neighbour”. It saddens me as I really do like my neighbours, and would not like to live in such a world that does not attempt to love its neighbour instead of fearing them.
I feel alone, misunderstood and my heart is heavy with disappointment. Therefore, my heart is bleeding. Why must I justify myself, yet again to another doubter whose formula or burden of proof is unattainable to me because sales have always been small and the profits fleeting? I guess I totally suck at it, big time! Nevertheless, my Burroughs text for example using their equation is considered wasting time and not real work unless it finds a publisher. I will press on and finish what I started but even the truth for me remains: if it is never published, sold, or even read, I don’t care; it is still my attempt to contribute creativity to this world. That is my reward, that is my success that is my privilege and in the end, that is the integrity of making art. I don’t make art because I can but because I have to. If I have to think who will buy or publish it, I may as well give up because, well you know why – I suck as a “company” and view economics as the dismal arts.
Pray for me as I need strength to dart the arrows of doubt that hedge me in from doing what I believe I must, even if it is considered frivolous to those that matter to me.
That’s how I feel today. I’m down in the dumps because of personal concerns surrounding my work and its production. I feel betrayed by the ignorance of youth and how in youth’s arrogance sometimes speaks without considering the deeper ramifications of their words. I’m not speaking of my youth here.
As an artist, I have spent most of my life just making what I feel a need to make without concentration on marketability, sales, or the other accolades of success. There are those amongst me who feel otherwise. That a work of art or a written passage only has merit if it’s being published or sold – if not it either is a failure or not work at all. What I mean is that the labour involved in writing for example, is not work to them unless it shows some kind of recognized value as in publication - payment.
I ask how many great works of art in all mediums have been ignored in the artists’ life only to be seen as masterpieces with time. Imagine Vincent Van Gogh’s regret when he visited his brother Theo's gallery in Paris to see that all his paintings were still there, stored in the storerooms of the gallery. Yes, he saw that as little 1% of the 800 or so works he made in his 10 years of being an artist had sold. It must have been very hard for him. Imagine then that when he went his brother said, well none has sold so you mustn’t be working hard enough or that you’re not really an artist until they sell. This didn’t happen to Vincent, or I don’t think so, although he did kill himself shortly there after. Anyway, it has happened to me.
I made a choice 30 years ago to pursue my work with integrity and not chase the dollar. I’ve had good luck with recognition of the work but none with sales. So just now, I’m being valued by those whose opinion should matter, that my endeavours are worthless or not even work unless my writings are published and that my works aren’t a success unless they sell. If it were just the outside world saying it, I’d have no problem dismissing it, but when it’s coming from people, that you thought would know better it’s like a knife cutting into my heart, my bleeding heart.
Please, I’m not naïve I know that bills must be paid, that’s why I garden for a living.
I don’t intend to write a long polemical argument as to why I think they have let me down but sadly, they have, and I feel alone as a result. When I ask if success is sales, then maybe I should take a survey of what images would sell best and paint those, would these be good art? Their answer is, well if it is not working then make change, adapt and yes, maybe you should take such a survey. You know why I cannot do this!
My cousin is a very respected and learned Psychiatrist whose wife is the Dean of Psychiatry at a University in the U.S.A., they told me that in a survey of what images relax patients in waiting room, the image of a boat moored in a bay gives the client peace and comforts them while they wait. Should I be doing paintings of boats?
I’m the kind of person that takes that above demographic and paints a pirate ship in that bay plundering all those contented and sleepily moored boats. I want to shake them up. I want them to take to sail and venture out of the bay to where danger, but also great joy awaits them, out in open sea – that’s what the damn boat was made for and not a tent on water. Sadly, that doesn’t sell and so to does my work not sell. This might be more telling about me and why I’ve never done well at selling art, most people just wanted to be herded into security and the lulled into a feeling of personal peace and affluence. Until a fully fueled passenger, jet comes crashing through your 50th storey office window and continues through the floor until only its engines go flying out the other side of the skyscraper as did happen at the World Trade Center in my beloved New York. If I could really paint, the shit that makes people fall into a trance neglecting to ask the obvious questions such as “Why do so many 3rd World People hate me this much that they’d fly a plane into this tower?” I’d wouldn’t be painting that shit anyway as I’m not a Social Realist as in Stalinist USSR-CCCP. No thanks, I leave that to the spin-doctors. However, let us not forget their message in this age and that seems to be fixed almost entirely in saying “Fear thy Neighbour”. It saddens me as I really do like my neighbours, and would not like to live in such a world that does not attempt to love its neighbour instead of fearing them.
I feel alone, misunderstood and my heart is heavy with disappointment. Therefore, my heart is bleeding. Why must I justify myself, yet again to another doubter whose formula or burden of proof is unattainable to me because sales have always been small and the profits fleeting? I guess I totally suck at it, big time! Nevertheless, my Burroughs text for example using their equation is considered wasting time and not real work unless it finds a publisher. I will press on and finish what I started but even the truth for me remains: if it is never published, sold, or even read, I don’t care; it is still my attempt to contribute creativity to this world. That is my reward, that is my success that is my privilege and in the end, that is the integrity of making art. I don’t make art because I can but because I have to. If I have to think who will buy or publish it, I may as well give up because, well you know why – I suck as a “company” and view economics as the dismal arts.
Pray for me as I need strength to dart the arrows of doubt that hedge me in from doing what I believe I must, even if it is considered frivolous to those that matter to me.
posted by Gerard Pas at 2:48 p.m.
1 Comments:
Right on! Praise Him.
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