Happiness Bores Me

At the artist talk that I just gave to a group of artists this past Friday night, a man asked me why I didn't paint portraits of women smiling. Why did I have to make them all look so sad? Without hesitation, I responded, "Happiness bores me." Everyone laughed (I didn't mean it to be funny), and several people looked at me with an almost pitying look. Doesn't everyone want to be happy? Why not paint happiness? But for better or worse, throughout my life I have always sought interesting over happy. And just 24 hours after my artist talk, reading the last few pages of the book The Psychopath Test, I found a kindred spirit in its author, Jon Ronson:

"There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact, our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things." (The Psychopath Test, p. 271)

Happiness seems simple. Personally, I like complicated. One of my favorite quotes about the nature of art asks:

Amanda Clyne, "Silver Variations No 2", oil on canvas, 2010

"How is the artist's perception unique? I don't think that when you see the most extravagant, extraordinary exhibition [...], you're really seeing the art. These are maps or charts or clues to the process that makes the art. The art is [the artist]'s perception of the world. The art is happening in [the artist]'s head. These are the maps to that art." (Arnold Glimcher, speaking at an interview with artist Louise Nevelson, quoted around minute 19:00 of the video)

I like to think that people are similar to artworks in this way. In trying to understand others, we can only go on the clues that they may offer or reveal by way of their words, actions, appearance and deeds. Clues from happiness seem to offer little in the way of insight, and perhaps more often than not only serve to mask the more interesting flaws, struggles, fears and desires that remain hidden behind those smiling eyes. For me, happiness just seems too cozy with that equally deceptive and ever-suspicious "normal" and its nefarious kin "perfect".

These curiosities lie at the core of my art. How do we connect to one another and on what basis? What do we allow others to see of ourselves? What are we sensitive enough to see in others? How much do we miss? How closely do we really look?  And how do we navigate through all the fragmented and often irreconcilable clues to understand a person in all their meandering complexities? The veneer of happiness seems to offer little in the way of answers. So don't expect to see one of my paintings smiling back at you anytime soon. :-)

My Sesame Street Theory

"...an encounter between persons and forms [is] in truth an encounter between persons - the maker and the receiver." (from Susan Stewart's "The Open Studio")

That was the opening to my first artist talk that I delivered to employees at Daimler Financial on Thursday. It was an amazing opportunity to reflect on the developments in my art and life over the past few years, and share my passion for art. It affirmed to me once again that being a viewer of art is in itself a creative exercise, and that the experience of art is a dynamic conversation, and hopefully connection, between artist and viewer.

The employees' response to the talk was amazing - the best compliment for me was that they appreciated how "accessible" I was. We talked about how a lot of artists try to build an aura of artistic "genius" by deliberately making themselves inaccessible. It is as if "accessible" in the art world has come to be synonymous with "mediocre". (I began to discuss this idea in my earlier blog posting "Over-Exposure".) But every time that I speak to people who love art and yet don't have a background in art and art theory, I am constantly struck at how much they want to understand more, and how remote the world of art seems to them. Does it really have to be that way? I work hard in my own practice to engage with the more complex ideas that the experience of art raises, but I am cautious to not make the visual experience of my work alienating. I want those viewers who are not necessarily familiar with the references and theories that I'm grappling with to still be drawn in - seduced - by the beauty of the image, the sensuality of the paint, and the ambiguity of the distortions. I think of it as my Sesame Street theory of art - I want my work to connect with "the kids" just as much as "the parents". Because until relatively recently, I was one of "the kids" too.

The Power of View

Everything feels quiet and still tonight, a little sleepy, and yet here I am.

I've spent the day preparing for my first artist talk. While it's generally not difficult for me to talk about my work, it's been challenging to come up with an approach that enables me to coherently and concisely explain, in 30 minutes or less, the dramatic changes in my life and art over the past few years. Speaking to a corporate audience (ie. the employees of Daimler Financial), I seem compelled to begin with: "I am one of you".

Wanting to explain the influence of my former life (as a New York corporate lawyer) on my art, I have decided that the premise for my talk will be Susan Stewart's assertion that "no artwork can be completed without reception." Although I never created art until after I quit my life as a lawyer (and it was a whole life that I quit, not just a job), I had always sought out the experience of art. If art is understood as a sort of collaboration between maker and receiver, then it seems less surprising that I could emerge from the rational, linguistic minutiae of the law into the expressive, poetic realm of the visual arts. Indeed, I believe an artist resides in most of us.

As an artist now, I am fascinated with the seductive nature of images - the fantasies they induce, the desires they stoke, the frailties they reveal - and the role the viewer plays in perpetuating their power.