It has been a while since I have written a blog. Time has been spent in producing art and marketing art in this dismal economic environment. Time spent in organizing for a Taos Studio Tour. Time doing what I felt needed to be done in order to weather the economic storm.
There comes a time, however, when one begins to ask questions: Should I resort to the "art of the times" and paint what people think one should be painting or should I continue to do what resonates with my heart and soul? Is there ever a time when an artist paints what sells versus what makes him or her alive with the act of creating? It is at times like these that I pick up Gerhard Richter's book The Daily Practice of Painting. Richter appears to be one of those artists who has walked to his own beat and continues to do so. He puts a realistic and at the same time cynical spin on the art business.
In the book the interviewer continues to talk with Richter re:his abstractions which he, the interviewer, has found not to be beautiful. In response to whether an artist has to be a great painter to "get away with painting such pictures," Richter responds: "A great painter–once I used to think I ought to paint like the "great masters’, and of course I couldn’t. I felt it to be a terrible lack in me, I thought I basically wasn’t a painter at all but a fraud, just pretending to be one. It was a long time before I realized that what I do–the desperate experimentation, all the difficulties–is exactly what they all do; that’s the normal nature of the job. That’s painting." (206)
His words express the struggle which painters go through regardless of style. I think it is probably more difficult for the painter who falls outside the "acceptable marketable genre" of the existing market. I am asked time and again whether I paint landscapes, a very marketable genre here in Taos. Sometimes, but not often is my answer. My paintings come from a different place, a place deep within my spirit that talks to something even I am not sure of, but which I know that I must continue to do.
Painting: Where are the Answers? Oil on Canvas, 38" X 38" (framed size), $2900 (USD)
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