Who is Yours
(Originally posted on 09-14-2010)
Who is the artist you have discovered that has walked or walks in an almost parallel path with you? Is there an artist that seems to “ooze” (if you permit me to use the word) the feelings and deep thoughts you believe could as easily be yours as theirs? Do you have an artist that is not a mentor or teacher but is simply an artist that seems to understand what makes up your drive and desire for art?
Mine is Sean Scully.
And I do not know exactly why it has been so appointed.
When I want to recenter my focus or remember why I paint what I paint, I look at the drawings I did as a young and younger person. All I have to do is pull out one of the note books from my high school days – of which I have very few – or from my time in upper education. I am very easily bored and can very quickly wander off mentally while listening to a speech, if I do not semi-occupy my mind with something such as drawing. The margins along my notebook pages contain abstract geometric concepts I drew while listening to a lecture or lesson.
This resource works as an anchor that helps me realize what is inside. And long before I ever knew who Sean Scully was, and even before Scully had moved to New York in 1975 or the Metropolitan Museum of Art became the first museum in America to purchase one of his paintings (1985 – Molloy), the subject of my drawings were often squares, rectangles, and other shapes fitted together into a larger image of something. Often I played with the distortion of perception and perspective.
When I began to paint more than one artist remarked that my art had a “sense of Scully.”
So I did my research and found an affinity with the artist I had not felt with any other artist I have admired. Sean Scully is described and comments on his feelings and thoughts in ways that really resonate. For instance, from the book published before the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s retrospective of Scully’s “Wall of Light“ (2006-2007), the artist is described as knowing “…that being an artist is all about desire, he knows too that active pursuit of the muse is doomed to disappointment. For this reason, the artist cannot put himself under the pressure to evolve. He must let questions go unanswered, go about his business, and then, when he least expects it, the muse will come.” (“Wall of Light”, Rizzoli International Publication, Inc.)
Discovering someone that has not so much influenced me but with whom I have discovered a connection, an artist to artist connection is encouraging to me, an obscure emerging artist. Am I as good as Scully as an artist? I don’t know. I am not as famous or recognized or exhibited or written about or video recorded…that is certain and as the words in the quote above remind me, those things may or may not come my way. But that does not stop me from pursuing the release of all that is within me to create the art honestly, humanly, emotionally and passionately.
Another quote from the book that I like is, “At a time when abstract painting has become forbidden territory, and are of research so esoteric it could be thought of as intellectually indefensible, Scully romantically pushes forward seeking a quality of light that is meaningful to himself and, he hopes to us.”
Unabashedly, I seek to study and to learn from Scully and develop a technique that is mine but is also as emotionally powerful as Scully’s.
Who is the artist you have discovered that has walked or walks in an almost parallel path with you? Is there an artist that seems to “ooze” (if you permit me to use the word) the feelings and deep thoughts you believe could as easily be yours as theirs? Do you have an artist that is not a mentor or teacher but is simply an artist that seems to understand what makes up your drive and desire for art?
Mine is Sean Scully.
And I do not know exactly why it has been so appointed.
When I want to recenter my focus or remember why I paint what I paint, I look at the drawings I did as a young and younger person. All I have to do is pull out one of the note books from my high school days – of which I have very few – or from my time in upper education. I am very easily bored and can very quickly wander off mentally while listening to a speech, if I do not semi-occupy my mind with something such as drawing. The margins along my notebook pages contain abstract geometric concepts I drew while listening to a lecture or lesson.
This resource works as an anchor that helps me realize what is inside. And long before I ever knew who Sean Scully was, and even before Scully had moved to New York in 1975 or the Metropolitan Museum of Art became the first museum in America to purchase one of his paintings (1985 – Molloy), the subject of my drawings were often squares, rectangles, and other shapes fitted together into a larger image of something. Often I played with the distortion of perception and perspective.
When I began to paint more than one artist remarked that my art had a “sense of Scully.”
So I did my research and found an affinity with the artist I had not felt with any other artist I have admired. Sean Scully is described and comments on his feelings and thoughts in ways that really resonate. For instance, from the book published before the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s retrospective of Scully’s “Wall of Light“ (2006-2007), the artist is described as knowing “…that being an artist is all about desire, he knows too that active pursuit of the muse is doomed to disappointment. For this reason, the artist cannot put himself under the pressure to evolve. He must let questions go unanswered, go about his business, and then, when he least expects it, the muse will come.” (“Wall of Light”, Rizzoli International Publication, Inc.)
Discovering someone that has not so much influenced me but with whom I have discovered a connection, an artist to artist connection is encouraging to me, an obscure emerging artist. Am I as good as Scully as an artist? I don’t know. I am not as famous or recognized or exhibited or written about or video recorded…that is certain and as the words in the quote above remind me, those things may or may not come my way. But that does not stop me from pursuing the release of all that is within me to create the art honestly, humanly, emotionally and passionately.
Another quote from the book that I like is, “At a time when abstract painting has become forbidden territory, and are of research so esoteric it could be thought of as intellectually indefensible, Scully romantically pushes forward seeking a quality of light that is meaningful to himself and, he hopes to us.”
Unabashedly, I seek to study and to learn from Scully and develop a technique that is mine but is also as emotionally powerful as Scully’s.
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