The entire experience of making art is kind of weird, if you really think about it. But it might be Most Weird, when you don’t think about it.
What is art? What is creativity? How do ideas and thoughts appear and disappear? How do we translate experience into image and object? … And then back?
Where does art come from?
WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?
The other day I had an experience which is oddly familiar. I was making wooden frames, which inevitably means lots of funny-shaped wood scraps. On a whim, I started glueing pieces together. Playing with glue. Just sticking pieces together, no intention or plan or thought to it. And then, from nowhere, the cat appeared.
Yes, that’s how the cat distribution system works. … But, genuinely, I looked down and realized that I had absent-mindedly made something that appeared to have been done on purpose. How does that happen?
Somewhat similarly, a couple of months back I was playing with a shape/idea and painted a small watercolor that was a pleasant-enough design but when I rotated it 180 degrees, with the blue (sky?) on top, it just … made sense. It clicked into an entirely different image, as though that was its intended orientation.
Perhaps the truth is, art doesn’t come FROM the artist, it comes THROUGH them. … even when the paper is upside down?
Writing is the same. The words come out when the thoughts stop. Painting is like watching someone else’s hand make the movements.
Maybe I am the stenographer, not the speaker? I cannot tell you about the art, as I wasn’t here when the art was made?
Where did the cat come from? The cat declines to comment. Typical.
