I am sure there are plenty of artists who would argue this point made by Jackson Pollock. Like religion, many would most likely defend their chosen means of expression as the best.
But I think he is saying there is no one right way, no one technique that ranks above all others in issuing an artist’s statement. Each artist’s individual voice comes through their own chosen technique. Their statement–their statement of belief, if you will– arrives via that technique.
I know that’s been my experience. I am generally looking for a statement of some sort from an artist in their work, something that displays their own truth regardless of how it is expressed.
Something that makes me feel the need to look at it.
It can be in any style, stretching from the most refined painting created by a classically schooled artist down to an untrained folk artist who uses their local mud as their painting medium because that is all that is at hand. So long as each is earnestly created (and that is an important distinction) and provokes a true emotional response, any and all technique is valid.
To bring it back to the religious analogy, the earnest belief of the lone person sitting in a decrepit hut somewhere may be as valid as that of a priest in the grandest cathedral.
Art, like religion, is diminished when we fail to see the validity of all other voices.
Redtree Times 
Just this morning, I posted a comment about a piece I read that described John McPhee’s writing technique.
No 8th grade formal outline for him. He had a board of some sort — cork, as I recall — covered with index cards containing sentences, phrases, or full paragraphs. One had a push pin stuck into it. He explained he always stuck a pin in the bit he was working on, so he could find it again.
Take that, software writing programs!
Hey, whatever works, right?
Yes, indeed.
What it boils down to for me is the validity of the personal viewpoint. The context, be it art, religion, or whatever, doesn’t matter. What matters is that you understand and appreciate that every individual has a viewpoint that is unique to themselves and therefore different from your own; more importantly, they have the same right to own it and express it as you do, regardless of whether you countenance what they see.
Because each of us has but a single viewpoint, our own, we are in effect seeing the world with only one eye. When you view the world with just one eye, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that it takes two eyes, two different viewpoints, to achieve depth perception. That, for me, is where it gets interesting. When you accept the validity of that second viewpoint, add it to your own and engage with it, you add second dimension to what you see and you are able to see all sorts of things you couldn’t see before. The trick is to be able to bring that second (artist’s) viewpoint into focus with your own. Practice makes perfect.
Well, I always certainly appreciate your viewpoint. You make a very good point about not allowing your own viewpoint to become too isolated. Our own voices are informed by many others.
On Tue, Apr 17, 2018 at 11:44 AM, Redtree Times wrote:
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