On Oct 24, 2008, at 8:58 AM, GEOFF CREALOCK wrote:
However, I didn't mean to imply express a verbal or pictorial message but rather that an artist/writer might wish to convey/make actual forms/perceptions/imagninings to others.
Okay. Except I don't set out to "convey them to others" but merely to make them. The viewers enter the picture later.
The following comment isn't directed at you, but is a general observation.
It's become quite a cliche heard in many circumstances to speak of an artist's "need to express" something, or similar sentiment. I don't buy it. I think that's pop psychology or the residual assertions of various manifestoes and proclamations that have seeped into general discourse to the point where the notion is taken as an established fact. I believe human motivations and the ways one acts upon are so wide-ranging and complex that rolling them all up into a single pat phrase is little more than flack, it's easy to talk about, it has a certain air of immaterial atmosphere, and it's undisprovable.
Well, let me refine that thought. I believe we feel the impetus to do things voluntarily as an outward act. I want to paint this.I want to sing a song. I want to build a shed. I want to drive the car fast. I want to make love to [insert name here]. I am strongly unconvinced that when I or someone else chooses to do any of these things, or other things, they are thinking, "Wow. My ego/id is driving me to a fuller practice of my selfhood." Nah. I don't think this is even a subconscious or protoconscious concept or motive. I think all of such arbitrarty choices are closer to appetitive drives to achieve satiation than they are to fully realize oneself. I am very wary of the deceit of vanity and the almost always destructive flaw of playing to the crowd--even when the crowd it me in the mirror watching what I am "expressing."
I don't want to "express" myself in painting. I want to paint that specific picture. And then that next one. And one after that. I choose to start at a certain point and proceed in a certain way until I declare it completed. I don't "experiment" or "explore experiences" (or other ex-rated formulations).
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [EMAIL PROTECTED]
