The Natural— At West End Gallery
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”
― Jim Jarmusch, MovieMaker Magazine, 2004
Awhile back, I knew a musician who used to claim that he tried to avoid listening to other people’s music so that anything he produced would be totally original. Even then, when I wasn’t yet a working artist, it sounded dubious and a little stupid to me.
Decades later, I am now positive that it was both.
Every artist in any medium would like to believe they are totally original but there are a precious few that can be defined as such. Those are the geniuses whose work redefines their fields and the way we perceive it. And even with such cases, their genius is in the way they synthesize their influences in creating something that appears original, new, and revolutionary.
Even the seemingly most original work that might be a groundbreaking, radical departure from everything that came before it has influences, something prior to it on which it was built.
Something never comes from nothing. As filmmaker Jim Jarmusch states above: Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent.
I know that my own work is not totally original. It can’t be, as much as I might want to claim that it is. I have borrowed (or stolen) things from every possible corner of my experience as a human, much like the items that Jarmusch lists above. My list ranges from impressions of the natural world around me to literature and music and movies to the work of other artists in every genre and age to a random smile from a stranger. It is a long and deep list.
I have can often see many of these specific influences after finishing a painting. Sometimes they seem obvious to me and sometimes they surprise me. I have previously mentioned, here and in gallery talks, an old Coke commercial from the 1980’s that really stuck in my mind. I saw it long before I had ever thought of being a painter but the colors in it had such richness and depth that I sometimes wonder if they didn’t pull me towards being an artist just so that I might seek that color. Sometimes I will finish a painting and the color in the Red Tree will trigger a memory of the reds in that ad. I am sure you would never recognize it as such.
I have synthesized it along with thousands of other large and small influences into something that, while it might not be totally original, is authentically my own.
I am showing the painting above, The Natural, as an example of how I am sometimes baffled by the way I see my influences in a piece. I don’t know why but the movie of the same name, The Natural, the Robert Redford baseball film based on the Bernard Malamud novel, immediately came to mind as I looked at this piece. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why this painting reminds me of that film. Maybe the Red Tree is Roy Hobbs? Or maybe it’s destined to be Wonderboy, the bat that Roy Hobbs carved out a tree that was struck by lightning? Or maybe it is the twilight feel from the moon as it rises?
As I said, I just don’t know. Probably never will. But I do know that I took something that film that sparked something in this painting. And that’s part of the authenticity that comes from synthesizing a diverse and wide range of influences.
And that’s the best I can do…
Okay, got to run. If you’re in Corning soon, please visit the West End Gallery and see The Natural. This 24″ by 12″ painting on canvas is included in Persistent Rhythm, my annual solo show now hanging there.
Redtree Times 