On painting

In Stephen King's book On Writing he says that if you want to be a writer you need to "read a lot and write a lot"- he says that if you can't or won't take the time to do these two things then you can't expect to write well. I'd say that's true.

As someone who draws and paints (though not as much as they used to) I'd also say that the same applies to drawing and painting: you've got to sketch and paint and you've got to look at other painting, past and current, so you know what else is out there.

I always made pictures, but it wasn't until high school that I spent any time studying art history and even then, not a lot of time. Production dropped off a great deal after high school, for reasons that I didn't notice at the time.

Looking back I can see why. I spent too much time thinking about pictures- what would make the perfect picture, what would make a picture "timeless" and not "dated", Ayn Rand's theory of art (I became very nervous that the paintings I made would not meet that standard and were not good enough), and lastly, and probably most importantly, I'd lost my audience. In high school, I got a lot of support from the other kids and a lot of attention. If I drew a picture one night after school, within two days a lot of people would've seen it and said something.

I read Kristin Hersh say that music isn't meant to be performed in a closet, it needs to be heard and it has to go out into the world. After high school I'd still make paintings but they'd go straight to my closet, and then when my closet was full they'd go to my parents' attic.

After a while you don't want to paint. What's the point?

I've always made pictures for my own enjoyment. I like making them and I love looking at them afterward. But I have to admit, I enjoyed having other people look at them. I like the idea that they were out there, walking around, living a life of their own.

So lately I've been trying to get back into painting. Many times over the past few years I've re-started. First I do some sketches that come out horrible and I want to stop and watch TV instead. I keep going and the sketches get better. Then I do a watercolor that comes out really well and it goes into an oaktag folder along with other watercolors that I did and I have another vacation.

I know now I've got to make some brand new paintings, both watercolor and oil, with the intention of exhibiting them somewhere. I live in a town with a big art scene (which I know nothing about as of yet) and there are plenty of galleries. Plus there are thousands of things to do on the internet; I just need to be creative and think a little.

There's just one other problem. It's another of the main reasons that I don't make as many pictures. I'm discouraged by a lot of the art I do see.

My pictures have always been realistic- recognizable images, people and places made to look the way I want them to look. So many of the paintings I see in art books and magazines are just shapes and colors. Here's where I sound like an old lady writing to Miss Manners- "I must be hopelessly out-of-date, but is this the way things are done now?"

I know it isn't cool to make representational art. "It's boring. I've seen this already. It's already been done." is what certain people say. And I don't mind going against the current views on artwork but I have to say, it really is discouraging to look at what the art world is holding up as "real art" these days. I don't se how people can be impressed by, say, Jackson Pollack, or what's-his-name with the paintings that are just one blue square with a little white around the edge. When I read people praising that in art history books I can't believe it. They can't really be being genuine- how can they talk about it as if it is anything related to art? How are they impressed by it? Are they, really?