Art and Life and How They Are Intertwined

Cynthia's Moon 18"x24" oil on canvas

MAT SMART, is the playwright I commissioned to write a stage play based on the Legacy painting written so much about in these pages. The play is called, “The Steadfast.” Mat had a major epiphany while working on a complex project that required a good bit of research.  One piece of research touched him deeply, and admitted to me this encounter changed his life.  The experience was so powerful that he felt compelled to show deference to the factual accounting of events he uncovered, faithfully representing them in the play.  All the other elements in the play are fictitious compendiums of all his other research.  For him, remaining respectfully steadfast to the true events was tantamount to paying tribute to the experience of the people he learned about.  A fine ideal no doubt, but as time went on he found himself stuck with this chunk of the play that was not working well in the context of the overall storytelling.  Fascinating conundrum.

After many months of working Mat arrived at the realization that he needed to jettison the factual representation of his research as it had become more obstacle than benefit.  Certain historical facts were not malleable while crafting the greater scheme of the play.  Mat had allowed himself to be restricted by the historical facts until he realized he had to break free from the bonds of factual journalism.  As artists we need to be focused on the integrity of our creation while sometimes being distracted by our desire to pay homage to the inspiration of our muses.

In making landscape paintings, I used to use photographs as reference.  I would begin the painting and have the photo taped to the easel next to the canvas.  Every single time I would get to a point in the process where I found myself constricted by the photo, and I would toss it aside.  I inadvertently was making photographs in paint.  This was not what I signed up for in being an artist.  I joined the artist tribe to be free.

When the photorealist painters of the 70’s and 80’s appeared on the scene, it caught a lot of attention.  Excruciating detail of street scenes or scenes in the subway with dizzying detail  as every tiny glint of light kicking off windows and shiny metal poles gave testimony to endlessly agonizing and stultifying drudgery —  much worse than high school trigonometry.  Technique is but one tool in the artist’s bag of tricks, not the whole bag.  Real artists use all the tricks in the bag, not just one at a time.  You know who likes that kind of painting?  People who are devoid of any originality.  People who are themselves excruciatingly boring and possessing as much imagination as a horseshoe crab with the emotional capacity of a granola bar.

I know how to paint a picture of an orange that looks like an orange.  Anyone can do that, yes pretty much anyone can do that over time, but who cares?  I want to paint a likeness of an orange that looks much more appealing than the orange you just brought home, an orange that makes your mouth water triggering your brain to say, “I gotta eat that orange ‘cause it looks so damn delicious.”  I want to paint an orange that is compelling.  That would be art.

So my friend has freed himself from being mired in journalism when what he really is after is writing a great play, period.   After all, why would you ruin a great story with the facts?

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