First Person Artist
I was walking down Rose Avenue in Venice the other day and the sky sparkled a fantastic shade of blue above a row of rumpled clouds and faded buildings. I rushed to get my camera to take a picture of the way it was playing out. But you just can't capture that sort of thing on film. As a painter, light and instinct are the currency of my work. I work on many paintings at once and face the ones that are drying against the wall. When I turn them around I look at them afresh and try and let my gut guide the next move.
I have two children and I think a lot about what it means to be a mother. It made me think of my mother and how I used to see her as a child. She was so glamorous, hanging out with her girlfriends back in the 1970s. That was the subject of my recent show.
Even though I've always been a visual artist, it took me a few years to show my work and have the courage to pursue it full-time. For many years, I earned a living as a writer or designer and kept my artwork to myself and a few close friends. When I was doing this, I felt as though I was walking around with my hand covering one eye, seeing in two dimensions and half-blind.
I am so lucky to be alive at a moment in time when technology coalesced to give me the means to express my thoughts in a new way--with images, sound, and video, too. It's an incredible time to be an artist. But it's one thing to find your voice, and another to have something to say. When it finally hit me, while horseback-riding under a full moon, a light turned on inside me with the sudden thump and wattage of a klieg light: time to share my work.
"The critics talked their way into the hushed and sacred parts of life. The painters preferred things half enchanted: certain facts were so delicate they could not endure the exposure of words." - Katie Roiphe on painter Vanessa Bell, in Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939
I used to view individual creativity like a milkshake and that it just depended upon which straw you stuck in there to suck it out. So, whether you wrote, painted, or played the saxophone, it would all come out expressing "you." But it's not that simple. Everyone possesses the artistic instinct and lives on a spectrum in his ability to express it.
No matter how beautiful, clever, or cynical the message, the driving force of all artists, be they painters, musicians, writers, actors, is to share, to evoke, to move something significant within the viewer or audience. Until recently, most artists were often confined to a relatively monastic existence where all but a lucky few reached a large segment of the population far and beyond their studios and geographic location. Thank GOD for the Internet and it's "Long Tail".
This column, "First Person Artist," will feature myself and other contemporary artists who will share their innermost thoughts on the creative process that culminated in a work of art or body of work. By sharing the ruminations and inspirations behind the works of artists in the first person, I hope to ignite like sparks in readers and then to hopefully set the place on fire.
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www.kimberlybrooks.com
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Kimberly, I really appreciated how you included musicians as artists. As a long time saxophonist who enjoys playing for an audience for the same reasons as you spoke about evoking emotion and reaction from whoever is viewing (or listening, or whatever..
Wow.
Your words ring in my mind like music. Keep playing whatever instrument it is you're playing, and I, for one, will keep listening.
The world cannot possibly have too many brave women. Continue, Warrior Princess. Courage.
Love the painting of your mom! You do beautiful work.
Wonderful to see a post by a visual artist.
IT can be a lonely life and finding that balance bewtween doing your "work" and making a living is tricky. I'm still trying to master that, but is getting better. What is particular to visual artists, especially painters is that there is no set career path.
Artmaking is a lifestyle and at some point you decide it's also your livelihood, and regardless of how that goes you still keep making art.
I, too, am an artist ,sitting up in my studio on the coast of Maine, on this beautiful fri. afternoon .I had spent many years in human service work helping others to express themselves creatively
i liked what you said. i too paint. but i love my paintings too much and want to hold onto them like children. of course, i'd like somone to love my paintings as much as i and give a glorious price - a price that says - okay, go ahead and paint for a while. but that is so difficult to achieve. i sold many paintings at a pittance when i was broke and tried to play the "starving artist." but i can't do that anymore. i am willing to make a living and hold onto all my paintings until someone respects them as much as i. it may be a j.d.saling
On the topic of loving inanimate objects “like children”: I’ve been there BUT I gave this phenomena some serious thought back in 1996 when I held an ALL FOR A DOLLAR show at MOBIUS in Boston. All of the pieces in the show had nothing less than 100 hours worth of my time invested in them – I loved them all so much! Some pieces were quite large (7’x 5’) and some were small and one was part of a written piece that I had been working on that I just wrote on the wall with charcoal. Every piece in that show was on sale for a dollar - first come first severed. I wanted to make the point that I would rather sell my work for ONE DOLLAR to someone who had waited in a line than to someone who would offer me what I knew was a pittance of their salary to have something that matched their sofa.
Well, the day of the sale the weather was horrendous – hurricane warnings in effect. Folks started calling my voicemail and leaving messages that they would give me $100 (and more) if they didn’t have to stand in line. I didn’t let anyone in until it was time for the sale. The first person had stood in a near hurricane for almost seven hours to claim his painting. I was never happier to give a piece to a buyer!
I still love my paintings like children. But now instead of making people huddle together in nasty weather to prove their admiration, I am now psychologically able to price the work such that I feel duly appreciated as the painting's "parent". In reality, as the artists we are just surrogates. The real magic happens in the mind of the beholder who wants to take that baby home and care for it.
R.L. McIntosh
Kimberly, the internet, how it will play out in terms of the art world is a fascinating topic. Bye bye gatekeepers -for one thing.
Check out sharkforum
I lived and worked in Venice in the late 80's -right by the Rose -and showed with LA Louver....
Images of my work can be found in the sept-oct issue of the magazine- Shelter
Come visit us over at sharkforum -stared for 200 bucks, 35,000 unique readers a month at the moment. The times are a changing-
Wesley Kimler
Bye-Bye gatejeepers? Only if we protect net neutrality! Right now net neutrality seems to be engaging mostly nerds and techno-geeks. But, as Wesley suggests, it's something artists ought be seriously embracing as well.
Start here:
http://www
You are so right Scarabus!
I believe it was Arianna herself that recommended that they change the name of this effort from "Net Neutrality" to "KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY PORN". That would certainly get people to at least notice what's going on! All the best to savetheint
Many if not most artists' entire careers consist of testing how well they bounce back from kicks in the teeth and run-ins with brick walls.
John Milton, the author of "Paradise Lost," hoped to find a "fit audience..
Bravo! Most of our days are spent surrounded by the 'ready-mad
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