From the Chicken Coop to the Meat Packing Plant: The Life of a Painting.

When I was a child we kept chickens in the summer time. There was only one rule: do not name the chickens because they were food - not pets. Every year I watched these chickens grow from cute fuzzy yellow chicks in the basement to smelly annoying dirty animals that I had to chase whenever they would get out of the coop to my plate at Sunday dinner. The life of a painting is much like this. It starts out small and quiet – letting a small peep out every once in a while. The artist nurtures it and treats it as if it is precious at this point. Then as the dialogue with paint and canvas ensues there are moments of frustration – points at which the painting is lost and regained. At times you feel in control and other times the painting is controlling you. It invades your dreams and becomes obsessively present in your brain and soul. You think you must turn it to the wall to escape it for a while but this does not work. The painting with all of its weaknesses and possibilities is demanding your attention. Your stomach starts to hurt as you feel you will never conquer it. Self doubt arises – perhaps you should have gone to law school creeps in your thoughts. Litanies of self-deprecating thoughts follow. Why did I think I could ever be an artist? Why did I ever think I could make a good painting? What kind of arrogance did I possess to think that any kind of message of mine would be important enough for others to look at or consider? The painting has become that annoying, dirty chicken chasing you and making you chase it to return it to the coop. And then it happens.

The Break Through

The painting has a direction, a purpose for its existence. A resolution presents itself. The painting has become ready for public consumption. And so like gathering the chickens into cages and loading them onto the truck you prepare this thing you have created for its public life. Presentation, documentation issues are addressed. It is framed or not framed as needed, you shoot slides and title it and write an artist statement. And there it sits ready like a newly butchered chicken with its giblets in a little baggie neatly wrapped up in plastic – waiting for a consumer. If you are lucky enough an audience notices it and it becomes food, sustenance for the soul. Feeding the dialogue between humans - the painting and the viewers giving life to each other. It leaves you then and takes on a life of its own and you return to the studio where another blank canvas waits quietly peeping from the dark basement of your soul and asks you to feed it.