The other day I was having an email discussion on various art-related topics with a fellow I know from Belgium (it never ceases to amaze me, how one winds up knowing people from around the globe, once one goes on-line) named Walter De Backer. Like a lot of email discussions, we were talking about 10 or 20 things at once. The thread that initiated this essay ran sort of like this:
Me: I paint fast, so there will be a lot of material of mine for people to notice, eventually.
Walter: Quantity doesn't buy a ticket to immortality.
Me: Well, neither does lack of quantity. (g)
Walter: Indeed. (g)
Me: I think I will just have to take my chances and continue to paint at the speed I am most comfortable with. Heh.
Walter: Right, but be careful: the quantity produced and the quantity made public are two different things. (g)
It was at this point that my brain exploded with a sudden realisation, and I replied:
Walter, 'careful' is very deliberately and premeditatedly NOT on my agenda. That is one of the basic tenants of my approach to painting, and my work in general. Absolutely everything I do (except for the really meaningless scribbles) is released to the public the day after its completion, paint, print, and soon, graphic design, through my website.
I believe that you have just done me a great service by posing this statement to me, more than you can possibly imagine or could have realised, because until you cautioned me, I did not realise the strength of my own conviction in this respect, it was just something I was doing, that had hitherto gone unchallenged.
I will continue down my 'incautious' path full bore, on that you can rely. I fully intend to show the world at large (whoever out there might be interested, anyway) exactly and precisely what I did, how I did it, and what I did next, from start to finish. Whatever notions other's might entertain that 'this is not the way to do things', they are welcome to follow their own course, but it will not be my course.
Once I had fired this reply off to Walter, who probably got a good chuckle out of it, I had to sit back and begin to analyse what to me, was a 'eureka experience', my suddenly becoming aware of something about the driving force underlying my work that I had previously been unaware of.
What Walter had said was " Right, but be careful: the quantity produced and the quantity made public are two different things." The underlying concept of this statement, at least in the manner I interpreted it, is that if one is going to produce a god-awful lot of work, one should hide the fact from the public. Since I brought my website on-line in March of 2001, I had been posting each item, whether painting, drawing, article, whatever, within 24 hours of having completed the work. Now I was faced with the suggestion that for some undefined reason, this was not an appropriate way to proceed.
There is no way that I could buy into such a notion. I mean, what's the deal, here, am I supposed to get tactical... am I supposed to 'play' the public... like a bunch of saps?? Am I supposed to hold back work to drive up the price? (this is an especially amusing notion, because I am selling very little of my work, as it is, in fact, almost none. Am I supposed to pretend that I am selling more than I am? Am I supposed to become some sort of deceiver?? Is that the price of financial success in the fine arts, that I have to lie to the public, in one way or another, in order to entice them into buying my work through some sort of sleight of hand??
I don't think so. I can't do that; it is not in my nature to behave in such a fashion. I would rather have to eat broken glass.
Of course, I do not hold it against my friend Walter, for bringing this to my attention; I suspect that he is correct, to the degree that this is 'standard operating procedure' in the fine arts. Heck, all my life I have seen people go on TV and tell every sort of lie imaginable, in order to cheat the gullible public out of their money, all the while justifying it, and dressing it up as something other than the thing that it is. I have seen these people reap financial rewards for their deceptions, in spite of the popular wisdom that 'Honesty is the best policy', which is now being extolled in many popular paperback self-help books.
I am not blind, or naive, I know that honesty is more often punished than rewarded in our society. I would love to have people beat a path to my door, and purchase my work. I just cannot bring myself to play that particular 'game', and will have to live with whatever price is extracted, for flying in the face of whatever societal 'norms' I am violating. If I were to 'game' the public, something essential would go out of my work, in the very same stroke with which I initiated the first deception.
My paintings are in a sense, very naive, but not in the sense that usually applies to paintings. They are naive in the sense that I have not, do not, and cannot conceive how I might, play to the public, while executing the work. I don't know how common or uncommon this is, but only that it is basic to my own work. When I start to paint, the part of my brain that can stand outside myself, and wonder what 'other people' are going to think when they see a particular painting, goes mercifully asleep. The work just gets done the way it does, because it 'looks right' and 'feels right' to me. This is no huge deal, really, in its execution... but if it were absent, I believe the results would be devastating.
I do not believe that, for myself at least, it is possible to commit a deception (even a very small one), on the 'business' side of the ledger, while retaining an honest attitude on the 'painting' side of the ledger. I don't think I could be a 'little bit of a whore'... as whichever famous personage it was who said it, once the line is crossed, character has already been determined, and it is just a matter of agreeing on the price. Our politicians, lawyers, insurance companies, television executives, etc. (just to name a few) did not start out as whores, but became whores, one small step at a time.
I do not believe that my character is any stronger than anyone else's, once the first fatal step has been taken; therefore, my only safe course lies in not taking the first step.
I am sure that a majority of people will consider that I have made quite a mountain, out of a very small molehill, but I disagree. Lying is a lot like smoking, or driving your space ship across the event horizon of a black hole... you may not notice anything out of the ordinary for quite a while, but turning the course, once it is embarked upon, is easier said than done.
I am too old for any more time and energy-consuming mistakes, especially when I can see them coming. I will continue to paint and display, just as I have in the past, regardless of financial or any other consequences. To act otherwise, would make facing my canvas, and the mirror that sits next to it, every morning, a purgatory I can do without.