I'm just part way into the interview - FANTASTIC! I think I've said this before, but your approach to creativity has been SO inspiring to me.
In my case, I'm hearing clarification around my own engagement with Painting, and my choice to remain free of the pressure to validate my work by gallery showings or sales. I have sold some pieces over the years, but this is not my goal in painting. I do not feel I need to make images which appeal to onlookers - my subjects tend to be expressions of the denizens and their domains in my unconscious. My paintings are my "stories" - often dark, as they struggle onto the canvas. I feel they use me as a sort of portal. When I am surprised by a piece which I could never have painted by my own volition - I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to do.
These past six years, my Art is being channeled into care giving. My studio is now functioning as a storage space - my easel unoccupied. There was a period when I despaired Fate's not-so-gentle nudge into the heavy realms of disease and dementia - supporting loved ones through end of life terror and suffering - but I've come to realize the Daimon's presence as having also prepared me to make this present calling - ART - inverting the daylight distraction of living, into the crucible of uncertainty.
Your lucid voice reiterates this for me - it is not ME doing Art....( or care giving ). It is something other.
Thank you for your wisdom and inspiration - now back to the interview.
Your words are just so poignant, Richard. As I read them, I can't help thinking of what Ken and Treya Killam Wilber went through together in the 1980s when she was diagnosed with breast cancer just ten days into their marriage. He has written movingly about the way he felt torn from his spiritual center as he realized he had to abandon meditation to be there with her and for her. Then he further realized that this in itself had become his spiritual practice, the very place that he and they needed to be. His characterization of the whole thing as a combination of grace and grit (which became the title of his/their memoir of that time together) has always struck me as deeply moving. I know everyone's circumstances, definitely including those of you and your partner, are unique. But as I said, the resonances are there.
Matt
I'm just part way into the interview - FANTASTIC! I think I've said this before, but your approach to creativity has been SO inspiring to me.
In my case, I'm hearing clarification around my own engagement with Painting, and my choice to remain free of the pressure to validate my work by gallery showings or sales. I have sold some pieces over the years, but this is not my goal in painting. I do not feel I need to make images which appeal to onlookers - my subjects tend to be expressions of the denizens and their domains in my unconscious. My paintings are my "stories" - often dark, as they struggle onto the canvas. I feel they use me as a sort of portal. When I am surprised by a piece which I could never have painted by my own volition - I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to do.
These past six years, my Art is being channeled into care giving. My studio is now functioning as a storage space - my easel unoccupied. There was a period when I despaired Fate's not-so-gentle nudge into the heavy realms of disease and dementia - supporting loved ones through end of life terror and suffering - but I've come to realize the Daimon's presence as having also prepared me to make this present calling - ART - inverting the daylight distraction of living, into the crucible of uncertainty.
Your lucid voice reiterates this for me - it is not ME doing Art....( or care giving ). It is something other.
Thank you for your wisdom and inspiration - now back to the interview.
Your words are just so poignant, Richard. As I read them, I can't help thinking of what Ken and Treya Killam Wilber went through together in the 1980s when she was diagnosed with breast cancer just ten days into their marriage. He has written movingly about the way he felt torn from his spiritual center as he realized he had to abandon meditation to be there with her and for her. Then he further realized that this in itself had become his spiritual practice, the very place that he and they needed to be. His characterization of the whole thing as a combination of grace and grit (which became the title of his/their memoir of that time together) has always struck me as deeply moving. I know everyone's circumstances, definitely including those of you and your partner, are unique. But as I said, the resonances are there.