Beaten (but not defeaten)
My motto is "write what you know, paint what you can." More often, it's a matter of 'when you can,' because the ideas don't come everyday. But if I don't (when I can) the hand gets stiff.
A new work of art is an answer without a question, as an enigma is a question without an answer. "What are you going to do about this?" -it seems to ask (as if the viewer were guilty). You don't have to answer the question.
At one point I had to decide what to do with a robust (but not excitingly innovative) painting style (such as mine). In the best works of art, style and subject support one another -in concert (to borrow an idiom from music). Perhaps virtuoso-and-accompanist would be a better simile. Style and subject should be complementary.
For the longest time, long after controversy had died, I was unable to resist the thrill of abstract painting. The re-introduction of subject matter only slowed the action. Gradually, I realized different subjects modulated the thrill of direct painting in satisfying ways.
I hit upon the subject/technique quotient in art myself. At the far extreme, a painting consisting of 100% subject was mechanical, "process," or a mass-offset Pop image without human touch. At the opposite extreme of 100% technique was the realm of the arbitrary, deliberately accidental, gestures of the hand: spills, drips, and similar forensic evidence of emotional out-pourings.
An even balance of subject and technique was the Golden Mean of painting. In my case, for example, I'm clearly not a portrait painter, for which the subject/technique quotient must preponderate on the side of the subject (the sitter). I am not a portrait painter because I can't help putting into a portrait too much of myself.
On the other hand, I seem to be a better painter than would seem to be necessary for my current subject (bums). I will admit to an admiration for the sort of tasteless, talent-less, academic painting endemic in professional painting schools, where not everyone is destined to a career in art, but everyone has a burning desire to paint.
When visiting studios I have to check my candor, and not unintentionally insult amateurs, by complimenting them on ambition. Forgive me, if anyone reading this is offended. “Keep doing what you're doing,” I usually say, “I would paint like you if I could.” I'm sincere. I honestly paint too well for my chosen subject (bums).
Terms approved for my paintings include burnished, rubbed, kneaded, coated, scraped, ground, and flattened. Paint (for me) is the medium of art (not the object of art) and is certainly not indulged “for its own sake.” My style may also be favorably described as stretched, wan, lean, careworn, pale, spare, ashen, and fretted.
The last adjective is particularly apt, as it is related linguistically to frottage, the taking of an impression from an engraving or embossed image by rubbing graphite over a thin piece of paper inserted in-between. The cruddiness of my technique is an intended metaphor for the cruddiness of the street. The tactile quality of oil painting is where it rubs shoulders with both engraved, intaglio printing, and three dimensional casting.
Recommended descriptions of my technique are scuffed, well-worn, old, faded, beat, beaten, beat-down, gray, brown, and yellow. It's easy to paint crud -once you let go of what you aspire to be, and admit you are doing the best you can.
My work appeals to the beaten and the downbeat. It suffers in solitude. It doesn't scream in pain. It groans.
The emotion of sympathy, for the unfortunate derelict, is the hoped-for response to my painting. It only hurts when I laugh.