Out of the Loop 2013
I’m fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It’s an odd feeling though, writing against the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall.
–Virginia Woolf, 22 November 1938, A Writer’s Diary (1953)
The lines above Virginia Woolf from a 1938 entry in her A Writer’s Diary struck a chord with me. In the entry, Woolf looked back on her career, describing how she had at points received praise and widespread acclaim and at other times fell out of favor with the literati, suffering criticism and personal attacks that marked her as a second-rate talent.
She had certainly known the highs and lows.
She claimed that the attacks did not bother her as much as she might have expected since she had never saw herself as being famous. How can they take away something you never felt you possessed? Actually, she saw their downgrading of her as being a sort of relief, shedding all pretense of her being part of the insider’s club. She could clearly see herself as an outsider now. As she wrote, it put her back to the wall, a place where she felt she did her best work.
Much like the I’ll show them attitude I described here recently.
As I wrote above, this resonated with me. Though I’ve had my fair share of high points and an equally fair share of low points, I have always, like Woolf, viewed myself as an outsider.
I believe this comes from knowing who I am and how I am built. I understand that I don’t have what it takes to be an insider. I don’t play a social game, don’t go to parties and few openings. To be honest, I am uncomfortable at my own events. I don’t schmooze with museum or gallery directors. Don’t seek out people who might specifically help my career. No agent seeking new opportunity nor public relations person trying to spread my name in the media. Outside of this blog and a few little social media entries, I have no mechanism for self-promotion. And even this seems like something more than self-promotion now.
I was never part of an artistic group or school. Well, there was one time, when my work first showed at the Principle Gallery in 1997. I was part of group of five artists from this region, all then showing at the West End Gallery, selected by the Principle Gallery who then labeled us the Finger Lakes School. We did a couple of shows there under that label. But even then, I was the outsider in that group, the only one of the five working outside of traditional representational oil painting.
I also don’t pursue opportunity. Perhaps to a fault.
After my 27-year relationship with Kada Gallery in Erie ended when they closed a couple of years ago and the gallery repping my work in California had changed their business model in a way that greatly lowered my visibility there, I considered looking for new galleries to replace those two. I had a realization then that I had not approached a gallery in nearly 30 years and that every gallery that had represented me approached me first. Approaching galleries now felt so far out of my comfort zone that I soon dropped the idea.
And often, I turn away those opportunities that are offered. I have often failed to follow-up on commission requests simply because I wanted to do work that pleased me first and then others, not the other way around.
A year or so ago, I was offered a chance to have 13 of my Red Tree paintings grace the covers of a series of Hermann Hesse books published in Mandarin Chinese. The company in China had been following my work for several years and felt that my work was a good match for Hesse’s work. I was flattered but ended up turning down the offer simply because I felt it was too far out of my hands.
Mistake? Maybe. It wouldn’t be the first time. But I find myself being okay with this and those other peccadilloes because I know how I am.
I know I am an outsider, will never be the toast of the art world outside of my little corner of it every once in a while.
The way I see it is that to be in that wider spotlight requires effort and responsibility that goes well beyond the work itself, something I am not comfortable in taking on at this point in my life as an artist.
And I am fine and comfortable with that. To be honest, I never trusted the perception that came with the highs nor the lows. Though the praise is nice to hear sometimes and the rejection always stings, they ultimately are not accurate indicators. The work was generally equal in my eyes at both the high and the low points. Actually, there has been work produced in the low points that went unnoticed that I feel was better than much of the work from the high points.
Time, it turns out, levels out those highs and lows.
So now I just do my work, as Woolf did, with my back against the wall and going forever against the current.
That’s all I can do. That is who and what I am– the outsider.
Here’s a tune from Eddie Vedder that is somewhat, if not wholly, in the same vein. This is Society.
PS: Not that it matters, but this is a remake of the post I accidentally deleted yesterday. I think the original had a bit more gracefulness and flow than this one. Maybe it hit its points more impactfully. But this will have to do for now. It’s much like trying to recreate a painting where the original just flowed organically from the artist. The copy never has the same ease of being, at least in the eyes of its maker.
The painting at the top, Out of the Loop, is a piece from 2013 that I am considering for inclusion in my June show at the Principle Gallery. It recently came back to me from California where it had been for over a dozen years. My impression of it had been reduced to the online image of it, such as the one at the top. When I took it from the crate, I was thrilled and surprised at its vibrance and depth, which far exceeded the digital image. Seemed a perfect fit for this post but still deciding if it goes to Alexandria in June. We’ll see…
Redtree Times 