Art

I bought this piece of art today at the famous gallery called “The Sidewalk Outside 7-Eleven.”  I even got to meet the artist, who offered blessings on my head along with my purchase.  I didn’t tell him that the picture was blessing enough, although I probably should have.

And all the way home I was thinking about art and artists, about creativity and courage, about vision and articulation.

What differentiates the artists from the rest of us is that they do it.  They draw or write or paint or dance while the rest of us do whatever it is we fritter away our time doing.  (Cleaning the bathroom?  Running errands?  Watching reruns?) (I’m not actually thinking about the time we spend at our paid work, because a great many artists have day jobs.)

There is one other thing that makes a difference, I think.  They put the work out there.  Yes, there are Emily Dickinsons who write to put poems in a drawer, but in general artists seem to work for the purpose of sharing what they do.  It’s a scary thing, sharing.  Some people won’t like the art.  Some people won’t get it.  Some people might feel like cleaning the bathroom would be a better use of time.

(It occurs to me that there might be an artist whose medium is cleaning bathrooms, but I am going to call that person’s work the exception.)

(My artistic medium might be the parenthetical remark.  At least today.)

I have a list of six miracles I would like to see happen.  I wrote it because I kept saying that everything would be fine if I just had six miracles and a pony.  (I no longer think the pony is necessary.)  One of those miracles is courage.

It takes courage to be an artist.  It takes courage to live.  Connection, the real kind, takes courage because in order to connect we have to open up the truth of who we are.  Some people might feel like cleaning the bathroom would be a better use of time, as I mentioned.

So.  This new piece of art I own is one I like intrinsically.  I like the artist’s framing of the scene, the immediacy, the way he used color, the inclusion of signs, both real and imaginary in the work.  I also like it for what it means for me personally.  It’s about the courage to create and connect.

I am going to make more stuff.