artist statement | declaración de artista 2009
when i was 6 years old, i copied nudes from my father's Playboys onto oatmeal construction paper with one of those thick, oversized black Crayola crayons.
i hid the pictures - ladies with breasts, nipple dots & large thatches of hair - inside the pages of the Playboys, then placed the Playboys in the linen closet, between the cold, neatly folded sheets.
eventually, my father found them & he convened a little talk. after careful review of my work, he said, "i thought you were a little too young for this." indeed, my father was correct - my 6 year old brain was not (yet) equipped to equate nakedness to a needy pornography as promulgated by society. but -- my kid brain knew aesthetics, and felt joy in reproducing the twists and turns (the S-curves) of naked women.
that same year, in kindergarten, i remember an incident where Nature imbued her peaceful message upon me, right in the middle of a recess. it was like this: i was running free & wild on the playground with some snot-nosed friends, having a brilliant time, when, abruptly, the green, verdant lawn began to vibrate, under an expansive yellow sun & an undulating blue sky. it was springtime: the Pennsylvania snows were newly melted, the birds were in circular flight, & were in song. i viewed the scene deeply: i smelled the scene deeply. i felt peace in my world-being. i saw clearly.
my kid sister and i used to face paint with various hues of ground limestone for hours at a time in summer light, pretending we were native americans.
i used to draw pictures in black mud with found sticks from the woods. & on the beach, in the sand.
i was a kid that used art as a mode of joy in a circumscribed world: i had no identity - people just told me to do things, how to act, and i blindly followed. my kid art was purely solipsistic & had no motive or intent. art's natural, undefined function is for the brain's subconscious to teach the conscious mind about the environment. art was not life (then) but a tool to learn life.
i took direction easily. good teachers worked their spells, and i absorbed lesson after lesson.
fast forward to junior high school and a poetry class; maybe it was a physics class, i can't recall. here's what happened: i encountered the word point-mass. a point-mass is defined as the mass of a blazing star consolidated to the size of a pinhead, like in Black Hole formation. this concept, encapsulated in a simple, elegant word, blew me away (and still does). right then, i knew the universe was something much larger than I had previously thought, & i knew language was more powerful than i was previously taught. my first real poem resulted from this word - it was like injecting my childspeak with potent universal energy, real universal truth.
then i remember the elegance of doing differential equations in college: the beauty of the mathematical symbols on the page, my trance in solving the equations in front of me. i got an A. i remember staring at my cousin's paintings at her house during college, and being held absolutely captive by their narratives and by their sense of dasein, or Otherness. such a chess game for the mind, & the eye.
somehow, Picasso and Monet and the branded artists made it from the milieu into my consciousness, and i realized that images had currency in the marketplace. Picasso was held by society to be a god. i can understand why -- such are the teeth & the claws of his work.
one day i had a fine painting teacher, of the elderly, Scottish sort. certain technical lessons caught on, & certain confidences.
there was always Stairway to Heaven on the family guitar.
i don't know what happened, or how it happened: Amedeo Modigliani, the Italian painter and sculptor, paid a visit into my consciousness. now wait: there are images where the poetry of kinetics (especially as it relates to women) exists in the world? lyrical lines, sensuality, warmth? where did it happen: Rothko's scale and intensity, Rivera's compassion, Mondrian's systems, Motherwell's action? why was i being transformed into an art student?
is it that the painting, framed as a window, leads one out of one's body and into new realities?
is it that colour has persuasive properties not commonly known to the general public?
is it that tangible art is therapeutic and self-fulfilling? is art an escape vehicle, of the neurotic sort, as stated by Freud and Plato?
painting is expensive: a picture takes about $250 to make, not including labor costs. a canvas is $70, paint is $50, brushes amortized for the job are about $12, electricity and other utilities are about $35 dollars more. don't even talk about sculpture: yes, one can set up an armature for $12, the plastilina clay is going to be $22, and the tools, amoritized, will be $2 per sculpture. this equates to a total of $36 for a 16" model, not including labor costs. now, if you wish to plaster-cast: throw in $100 for the silicon mold, $15 for the hydrocal. wish to bronze? throw is another $440 to do it yourself at the art school, or have a foundry do it for $600 [the bronze metal itself will be $18 per pound]. & the opportunity costs are great, since one is not making a living, or resting for a "real job," when one is painting, or sculpting, or creating. these are not cheap medium to explore ones inner-self, to find new techniques of expression. and any study at the art school is going to cost $275 to $1200 per class.
but, the physical action of the torso and shoulders, the smell of industry, the sound of the canvas scraping, the visual rewards, new colours to emotionally encounter, risk & reward - they make for a very nice experience.
painting, which is plastic sculpture (and storytelling) is obsession. it is solitary, & safe. as you grow older, your painting grows as well. things never stay the same. and yet, your signature style is always there: something you can't really un-learn, or get rid of.
so, today, i find myself moved by the Spirit to do this un-economical thing, searching for faces in the paints & in the clay. in this sense, i am akin to the maskmakers of antiquity, of the indigenous tribes, finding primitive visceral meaning in the face, the eyes, the masses of the body.
before, i copied Modigliani, Picasso, Braque, and Rivera. today, Henry Moore sculptures inspire me. and Brancusi. and Modigliani. and Giocometti. and Rodin. yet, in some cases, i am striking out on my own, with new themes i have found by chance, or by others' influence. Octavio Paz's poetry has led me to surrealism, primitivism, and a Mexican identity. his poetry has also solidified many aspects of my existentialist philosophy. Arnold Belkin, Tomayo and the Mexican Interioristas are having an effect. Andrew Wyeth is someone i have knocked off time & again.
i am moved by the creative Spirit. this is a fact.
thank you Muse, Spirit, Calling, Neurosis, What-have-you.
~ mjh - seattle, washington state, usa