Rockwell Kent– Sunglare, Alaska (1919)
Often I think that however much I draw or paint, or however well, I am not an artist as art is generally understood. The abstract is meaningless to me save as a fragment of the whole, which is life itself… It is the ultimate which concerns me, and all physical, all material things are but an expression of it… We are part and parcel of the big plan of things. We are simply instruments recording in different measure our particular portion of the infinite. And what we absorb of it makes for character, and what we give forth, for expression.
–Rockwell Kent, Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska (1918)
I am sometimes a little hesitant in using the words of other artists in describing my own. After all, art is so subjective, both in viewing and creating, that the driving forces and subjective criteria of one can be quite different than those of another. In short, my what and why may not be the same as yours.
But I came across this passage from the journal of Rockwell Kent, an artist whose work and words I have always admired. One of the big moments in my early career was being chosen for a museum exhibition in which his work was also shown. It sure felt like a big deal then to have my name listed alongside his on the brochure for the show.
Kent kept this journal during the time in 1918 when he withdrew to an island off the coast of Alaska, along with his seven-year-old son. He was fleeing to a remote place where he could get away from marital and financial problems and a world where a World War raged and the Spanish Flu pandemic was in full, deadly force. The same world that at that time seemed to care little for the work he passionately created.
In this time, he deeply felt his own apartness from this world while at the time finding an understanding of the interconnectedness of all things. The idea that we are all part of the infinite was something which became a theme for much of his work.
I can understand that. It is basically the theme for my current show and much of my work throughout my career.
The paragraph above just slayed me when I read it. It hit on several things that I feel in my own life and work. The end of that first sentence– I am not an artist as art is generally understood— is a thought that has been with me for many years, long before stumbling across Kent’s words.
For me, I often don’t think of myself as an artist first since I didn’t come to it because of a natural and readily evident physical talent. My main impetus was instead the need to express something felt deep within, something that could not find form in any other way, something I could not easily identify or even know. That need to express the inexpressible far outweighed any innate ability that I possessed.
I’m not sure that is the same for all artists. I don’t know, of course, and I am certain that there are plenty who have this same feeling, this sense of being both apart from the world of art even as they are seen as part of it. Perhaps as many or more than those who easily made their way to a life in art because of their natural facility and talents, those artists who feel comfortable and accepted within the world of art, never doubting their place in it.
The latter part of this paragraph where Kent states that all physical, material things are mere expressions or physical manifestations of the infinite– the ultimate, as he calls it– echoes in what I have described as the belief system behind the work in my Entanglement series.
And that is reinforced even more in the next part: We are part and parcel of the big plan of things. We are simply instruments recording in different measure our particular portion of the infinite.
We are all part of that one infinity and we uniquely serve purposes that we may never know or understand, hard as we may try to do so. For some like Rockwell Kent–and myself as I see it– that task or purpose is to give form to feeling so that others might somehow find some understanding of the infinite and their own unique part in it.
Another short passage from this journal says:
These are the times in life — when nothing happens — but in quietness the soul expands.
This sentence also struck a resonating chord with me. It wasn’t always that way. There are times in one’s life when sound and action is more welcoming than stillness and quiet, times when doing and going seem more important than simply being.
It seems that stillness creates space in which the soul can expand.
That’s my take on Kent’s lovely words for the day. Does it make sense for anyone other than me? I can’t say.
Just looking to expand my soul this morning with a little quietness,,,
Redtree Times 