I paint. These evenings, I no longer gravitate to the towering piles of books on my nightstand and bookshelves, nor do I bother with my own writing. Instead, I have spent a good deal of bitterly cold winter nights painting. This recent extra-curricular development is unambitious. I do not fantasize pretentious gallery openings or cocktail parties where I will discuss my “art.” I disregard technique, form, composition, and any other Studio Art 101 buzzwords. The methods I employ are akin to that of a gleeful kindergartener.
I approach this new venture with passion. I rack up expensive credit card bills at the art store, buying acrylic paints in metallics, neons, red, blue, green, brushes with hard, soft, plastic, round, flat bristles, and canvases in all shapes and sizes. I exploit techniques: I use my fingers; I spray my paintings with water, just to see what’ll happen; I mix colors. I begin with no particular end in mind; the painting engenders itself. And if I don’t like how something came out, no problem: I just paint right over it. There are no mistakes. In this unsupervised arena, I am bold and I am fearless.
It is a hobby that asks for nothing in return. There are no deadlines, there are no reports, there are no sleepless nights spent searching for the correct verb. I paint purely for the pleasure, for the purpose of painting itself. I paint because I want to. Isn’t this the most untainted approach; isn’t this, idealistically, how all beauty should be produced? With passion and disregard? The artistic experience has, of course, like all else, been commercialized. We no longer do anything for “fun” or for ourselves, but rather for a profit, perhaps monetary, perhaps emotional. And it is this disregard for conventional standards and hierarchy and rankings and prizes, which so define institutions and societies which we are all a part of, which lures me. I paint because no one cares if I paint or not. I paint because my paintings don’t make a difference.
I could quote Shklovsky. I could tell you the purpose of my paintings is to de-familiarize. I could tell you that my paintings are a neo-Jackson Pollack invention, heavily influenced by Kandinsky and Mondrian, which, like all post-modern art, does not attempt to conform to any structure or create any meaning. I could philosophize, categorize, speak in a slightly nasal voice, and tell you that the streaks of blue are a reification of post-capitalist hegemony and the little specks of yellow represent the repressed proletariat agency (I’m just that good…).
But why would I want to do that? I’m having too much fun already.