I am getting ready to head out to Westfield later today for an Art Talk that I will be giving this evening, Thursday beginning at 6 PM, at the Octagon Gallery at the historic Patterson Library. The talk is in support of my Icons & Exiles exhibit that hangs there until next Friday, September 20. It’s a very eclectic exhibit that showcases work from several different series from the past 20+ years that normally hasn’t had much public exposure. Much of this work is more narrative driven than my typical work which is more about emitting emotion. So there are plenty of stories to be told from this show.
I thought I’d share a blog entry that ran here back in 2009 about one of the paintings in the exhibit and how it relates to the act of promoting your work, something I’ve talked about here in recent weeks. Here it is:
This is another piece from my early Exiles series, titled Bang Your Drum. This is a later piece, finished in early 1996.
Initially, I was a bit more ambivalent about this painting compared to the feeling I had for the other pieces of the Exiles series. It exuded a different vibe. For me, the fact that the drummer is marching signifies a move away from the pain and loss of the other Exiles pieces. There is still solemnity but he is moving ahead to the future, away from the past.
Over the years, this piece has grown on me and I relate very strongly to the symbolism of the act of beating one’s own drum, something that is a very large part of promoting your work as an artist.
For me and most artists, it is a very difficult aspect of the job, one that is the polar opposite to the traits that led many of us to art. Many are introverted observers of the world, passively taking in the world as it races by as they quietly watch from a distance. To have to suddenly be the the motor to propel your work outward is an awkward step for many, myself included. Even this blog, which is a vehicle for informing the public about my ongoing work and remains very useful to me as a therapeutic tool for organizing my thoughts, is often a tortuous chore, one that I sometimes agonize and fret over. Even though my work is a public display of my personal feelings, this is different. More obvious and out in the open.
There’s always the fear that I will expose myself to be less than my work. The fear that people will suddenly discover the myriad weaknesses in my character that may not show in my paintings, forever altering their view of it. The fear that I will be revealed to be, as they say, a mile wide and an inch deep.
But here I stand with my drumstick in hand, hoping to overcome these fears and trusting that people will look beyond my obvious flaws when they view my work. Maybe they too have the same fears and that is the commonality they see and connect with in the work. Whatever the case, there is something in the work that makes me believe that I must fight past these fears and move it forward, out into the world.
What that is, as I’ve said before, I just don’t know. Can’t think about it now– I’ve got a drum to pound…
Hope you can make it to the talk tonight. I’ll be there, banging my drum. Here’s a little music to get you in the mood. Todd Rundgren from 1983 even though it seems about a million years ago. He knows what I’m talking about.
Redtree Times 