Art, Artists, Inspiration, and Me

[pasithea]

Watched a biography on Keith Haring last night. The first time I consciously encountered his art was in ~1991 at the Santa Cruz LGBCC (It didn't even have the T back then) It stuck in my head as being really simple and yet really interesting.

In the broader sense, this was really some of the first art I'd become aware of on my own. Growing up in rural Oklahoma, pretty-much the only art I was exposed to was cartoons, rather *tedious religious artwork, and folk art and crafts. Of those, cartoons didn't really register to me as 'art'. They were 'cartoons. for kids'. Blah. Leaving folk art. While I encountered and made a lot of beautiful stuff as folk art, but the emphasis wasn't pride in my work or really being artistic. My objective was to create things quickly that could be sold for maximum profit. Some 'art' resulted from this, but honestly, except for a few 'just for me' pieces, most of my work was pretty loveless. Almost entirely abstract pattern. I'd play with ideas but whatever sold well would tend to dominate.

Perhaps that's part of why Haring's art appeals to me. It was made to be made quickly and in volume but at the same time, it's got a lot of energy, rhythm, motion, and meaning. It's something I still aspire towards. I've still not mastered a clean graphic aesthetic. Most of my work has a scratchy worked feel to it, almost the exact opposite of a commercial style.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I've taught myself to draw and now don't really know quite what to do with the skill. I'm torn between two desires. The first is to create worlds and ideas. Places that last in my mind forever. The other is to return to doing a more commercial type of work where I can make some profit from my works and give myself more space to do the things I want to do. Haring, it seems managed to find the balance that I long for.

I think another part of my problem is that I have no real style. I tried very hard not to. I'd rather be flexible and able to make anything I want without using shortcuts, but now that I'm basically at that point... I have too many options or perhaps not enough passion or focus. There are so many stories I want to tell with my work and so many political and social commentaries, but there's just not enough time for me to do them all in the way I work. Or maybe I'm just afraid. There's so much beautiful and meaningful art in the world around me and I'm basically nobody. My life doesn't have a lot of point or purpose. What good is a story teller that no one listens to? I can say I make art just for me, but it's really not true. I make art to communicate. All the art is already in my head. It's always eating at me, begging to get out, screaming at me to make it better, faster, more accurate. The need to share is painful. And maybe it's more than that. Maybe I need to see my internal worlds outside my head, just so they seem a little more real and I feel a little less crazy. But right now I'm stuck and time slips away.

Perhaps I need to spend time looking at more art, but I barely even know what appeals to me. Haring, particularly his more complex works are definitely something that resonate with me. Felix, a psychedelic artist I found online and know very little about beyond his works really inspiring me.Winsor McKay, Van Gogh, some Jackson Pollock. some Picasso's work. That's about it for names that come readily to my head, though I know I've omitted several brilliant animators that I like. I dunno. I need to be inspired. :(

*tedious religious artwork: There are some really brilliant pieces of religious art out there. Stuff that is really beautiful and inspiring. The works of Michaelangelo or Bosch come to mind, but the stuff I was exposed to was of a much lower quality.

Comments

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Do an homage or three to Haring; see what bits of his schtick really resonate with you and make them yours.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Just tangential, I'd been looking at artwork by Kris Kuksi and thought you might enjoy it. www.kuksi.com I believe. He has this weird style of using commercially available dolls, model kits, and plastic skeletons, which is sort of like ILM producing Tibetan lamaist art or Giger stuff. Nothing like Haring's super-simplified stuff, much more of the "and we put details on those details next to the other details."

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Having known a few artists who wanted to figure out how to tell stories in their own style, my advice is to just jump in with both feet. The folks I know, like quirkybird, are illustrators who wanted to start doing sequential art; they started with short pieces, then moved on to more ambitious projects. You might find http://www.bitemecomic.com/ and http://www.lutherlevy.com/ illustrative; the first is a story that quirkybird started in 2000, finished in 2004, and published as a graphic novel this year, the second is her current project. You can basically watch her style evolve over the course of both pieces. This, to me, is a very nifty thing. Tell stories, and as you tell them, you get better at the art and craft of storytelling.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I think we need to spend several months working together.

[hairypolack.livejournal.com]

I criticized Haring online and got slaughtered

some of his CARTOONS contain some energy and bounce


theyre very good doodles, top shelf graphitti

I feel like the kid arguing about the emperors new clothes when it comes to Haring

[paka.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one who doesn't especially dig the guy's stuff. I felt like there was this attitude of "you're Queer, so you must like this" (I had a similar "you're Jewish, so you must like this" experience with Chagall) which confuses the issue of how good his stuff is. I feel like "hey, we exist" is such a big and resonant statement to make that anyone with some okay grasp on color and gesture and the right connections would suddenly become a big deal, and that's Haring; someone who's like a 7 on a 10 point scale of how good their art is, but usually touted as a 12.