This week’s post is something special: a guest post from my brother who is, if I might say despite my clear bias, an incredibly talented artist. To see more from him, check out his website, which is full of amazing pieces.
If you know me and are interested in guest posting about something that’s been consuming you, please let me know! I’ll be happy to do it, I think it could be a fun series to get rants, consumptions, etc from all types of folks!
Sometimes when I have completely run out of ideas, or interesting places, or thoughts, or anger, I instead draw the same couple of patterns and lines over and over again. Layering them on top of each other in familiar and unfamiliar ways, deciding which color looks best combined with the other, drawing the same Olive cartoon shape. And the more I layer things, the more patterns interact, the easier it is for the final product to appear in my head.
The thing that I love about art, I tell my therapist sometimes, is that I never felt I was doing it wrong. Unlike everything else in my life where I felt like I was screwing up, or doing wrong, or not good enough, when I am drawing or painting or making I feel completely in the moment unconcerned if the thing that is being made will gain success or criticism. My work is not perfect, it’s sloppy, or rushed, or juvenile, or any number of things. But oddly enough I have stopped caring much about how it’s perceived and instead have embraced just making things and exploring my world and thoughts visually. We all have reoccurring patterns in our work, images that show up again and again. And the most fun I have working is looking retrospectively at everything and finally having a small glimpse into what was fueling me.
A lot of this now exists in sketchbooks that never make it to public view. But I do flip through them and notice objects and patterns that surrounded my life at certain times. The older I get, and the more I make work for my own private consumption, the more I grow my life and expand in other directions, the more confident I find with identifying myself as a creative, or an artist, or a designer.
Drawing in my sketchbook is maybe the closest I come to some sort of consistent meditative practice, I have stacks and stacks of notebooks and papers filled with ideas and stories and thoughts starting from the time I was maybe 15. And if you look at all of these together you see a story of a person who’s desperately trying to find themselves through everything around them.
I think to some degree I’ve always tried to resist how personal my work is, and I’ve sought, in every way I can, to make my work about something other than myself. I’ve reached for all the things in the world that are unjust and unkind and thought maybe I could make something, or say something, that might fix or change those things. But at the end of the day the work is tied to myself, and my struggles, and my thoughts, and my worries, and my anger, and my anxiety, and my happiness.
I’ve been thinking more and more about what it would mean to pursue in earnest a career in Fine Art. To put more time and effort than before into actually making paintings and drawings and works to show, what it would look like to have a gallery show filled with work and the people I love. What it would look like to have my dog sitting beside me while I talk about the things I’ve put off for so long. And to some degree the practice of making work, and writing about work, and drawing work, and posting work, has been a practice to try and build dedicated time to that goal.
When we draw in a sketchbook we are drawing out these possibilities, imagining all the future work that could be made, capturing all the present moments to become something bigger and better later, or to reference visually at some future date when your energy has depleted. The world of social media and big companies has forced us to show all of our work constantly, to think of every page and every drawing as a finished piece of work. To showcase everything to the world as a polished piece of content to be consumed. There is no shortage of pictures of nice sketchbooks framed perfectly with perfect lighting and perfect drawings on perfect landscapes. There is a huge shortage of the little sketches, and post its, and note cards, and napkin drawings, that make up the majority of creative peoples work and inspiration. I’ve been trying to think instead of the work I make lately as these little moments, or scraps of creative energy that can fuel me later when I’m feeling burnt out. Ideas and memories.