More About Work

Making art is not enough, if one is to have a career. Ideas, statements, and words, are necessary for the people who make careers for artists. They need them. It is important for historical purpose, they say, to have the context. Work is seen through the lens of personal and world events.

Such a writer person was telling me that women artists can be difficult in this regard. They will not always be eager to talk of the personal as it meshes (messes) with the work. I know why this is, at least from my perspective, and I tried to convey it. I keep work and personal life apart for very practical reasons. I could not possibly get anything accomplished otherwise. Well, my writer friend says this is fine if you don't care about being known. But I do want to be known. I feel obligated to nurture my work. It really is my life after all. Work does not thrive in the closet.

As I was working and mothering small children, some gallery dealers would not take me seriously if they knew about the kids. Women were expected to do one thing or the other. Men could have wives, lovers, kids all over the place. In fact it was an enhancement to the image. Not so for women. One more reason to keep the personal and the studio life well separated.
Another reason for withholding or not offering the information is that women are still judged so harshly for having interesting lives. Maybe some of you have noticed, that women who promote themselves in any transparent way (in dance, work, life) are generally thought of with distain.

Writer friend says the men she interviews for her books are more open in general about the personal. I really doubt it though. They just have a story worked out, and they are prouder of it. The trouble with any story is that after awhile, it becomes an uncomfortable definition, and over time, it is just a padded resume. It is important for the subject to be able to disregard it. It is a mistake to believe one's own propaganda.

For me to work with the figure is for me to convey myself. I feel, working with a loaded brush in a long stroke painting the curve of the hip, the arabesque of the thigh, that I am feeling that brush, that it is a painting by and of myself. No man can paint a woman this way, from the internal knowing of that place which is life. However he has taken women into his life, he still must remain the viewer. A male painter paints a plum on a plate, I am the plum on the plate.

I understand that the writer must find some context, but it always takes me a step outside of my actual work and the actual real motivation whenever I have to consider the external events. I am an artist, and I was born one, and I remain convinced that I would do this no matter what was going on, and that just going to work is all that really matters.

But my thought is, that if I am essentially painting myself, why does it matter at any given decade, who I live with, what my family situation is, where I live or travel, or what the hell is going on in politics or other things in a world that is actually very far outside of what is going on in the studio? This may be a female view, and an isolationist view, but it is the only one that I can honestly claim.

Right now I am enjoying the work of Mayumi Oda. Her Buddhist and feminist themes run strong. Her women are all goddesses with personality. They are not objects. Also I am in love with the work of a Montana artist, the late Rudy Autio. Right now it is pretty obvious that tango has influenced the work, and made me much more interested in the figure, and in the charged space between the figure, and of how the fragmented figure might create rhythms in space. But talking about that does not illuminate. Only the work does.

I cannot keep up with the art scene so much, being too busy making it and trying very hard to figure out how to stay on course. I would like to have more social contact in that world again, but the people would have to learn to dance! I am lucky, I get to make art, and even to sell it, and to work full time. On occasion I have had the stimulating and charming experience of teaching, pretty much when I want to. Whatever happens in my life day to day has to be a support as I continue to nurture both the art and the career. This is the time.

P.S. Another influential artist: Betty Woodman, ceramic artist.