Well, I've thought about that too and the fact that most other artists enjoy what I do, and sometimes even find some way to incorporate what I do into their art, then it's the public that have the problems with it, well not the public so much as galleries and bureaucrats, as the public actually seem to be intrigued...
But recently I'd thought that I'd taken enough time off to let everyone catch up and that I'd finally hit the "on time" button smack in the middle but it seems yet again that I'm a bit too far into my own future.
This is the add thats goin' into ARTNEWS because what I did before wasn't liked by the gallery where I show. The above, my portion, was whipped together last night with me takin' a photo I was sent and pushin' lots of buttons in Gimp ( linux version of photoshop) and basically not even tryin'.
Whereas the artwork I wanted to use and took me a whole bunch of time, hand work, scannin' then working in Gimp, wasn't regarded with much enjoyment by the gallery.
The problem was that the complete page didn't gell too well as a whole.
I reckon the whole page is alright. Okay theres three distinct things goin' on and they do clash somewhat and my one tends to stand out but thats where the time went so it stands to reason if the other two adds haven't had much time spent on them then they're goin' to get the background.
Anyways the politics of ascendancy aren't what I'm on about here. What I'm on about is findin' myself yet again being asked to go backwards to make a buck and its interesting that so many artists seem to romantisie about being poor but true to themselves without havin' an understanding of why what they are doin' isn't sellin'.
True, the fact of bein' true to yourself will always have you out in your own lush landscape with few who can recognise the foliage but the question for me is the ability to understand where one is, where everyone else is, then being able to focus the lenses that will make a picture for everyone.
What that means is that artists need an ability to see what they're doin' while also bein' able to undertand the perceptual awareness of their potential audience and then be able to find the ground in the middle that compromises neither while also bein' able to offer a gestalt of both directions and therefore carry on the dialectic into new areas of potential.
So I guess what I'm saying is that, in the instance above, I went too far ahead with my own concepts and wasn't able to have enough awareness of fitting my ideals with the pragmatism of the zeitgeist. It doesn't mean I've failed or gotten too ahead of myself so much as I've been given a reminder to be more aware of the boundaries of the perceptual paradigm that occurs around what I'm seen to be able to accomplish and to make that more in sync with what I feel I'm able to accomplish.
I could then get lost up my own sense of self importance and convince myself that what I'm attempting to do with my art is just too far ahead of the world around me for them to get it, as in put the blame squarely on the shoulders of everyone else, or I could take a little humility in hand and realise that distance from the whole reason for art, to encourage and inspire everyone, isn't a good thing or place to be in for long and come back down to earth and be more empathic about understanding the audience I'll be lucky enough to get.
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