All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
–Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther 1774
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One of the primary factors in my finding my way to art was the fact that whatever I created would be all my own, a reflection of what I felt was my own truth. Art, painting in my particular case, was the one place in this world where I could have total control, the one place where I could set the rules and chose what criteria would satisfy my own needs.
I would be using materials and knowledge available to everyone else, just like the knowledge referenced in Goethe’s quote above. But what made art so appealing was that there was the opportunity to take these materials and knowledge and transform them into something quite different than the person sitting next to you equipped with the same materials and knowledge. For some, it is an academic exercise that uses the materials and knowledge by the book with little of their own self invested. For others, it is a battleground in an existential struggle to be heard, to have their voice have meaning of some kind.
The real difference between these two comes from how much one is willing to totally reveal their self in this work, how they interpret the materials and knowledge they are given, and how much of their heart and soul they are willing to put on display. For me, having my own heart evident in my art was always an existential effort– if I couldn’t make something that was uniquely my own then I would not be pursuing it for long.
You know, this is a pretty simple quote on the surface but it is one that makes me struggle in discussing my own relationship to it. Perhaps I should just let Goethe’s few words stand as they are and let the new painting at the top of the page, a 24″ by 48″ canvas that I call The Singular Heart, speak for me. After all, that is what the whole thing is about– a heart that is all one’s own.
Redtree Times 