At times, when I write or speak of art, I speak as critic/historian, other times, I speak as a viewer or fan, and other times I speak as an artist – this is one of those times I speak as an artist. Doing so, I risk revealing some very personal things and even a paradoxic truth that contradicts my claimed position. We’ll see what happens here….

An artist’s life can be like that, paradoxic, I mean – we inherit many ghosts from the past, ghosts from those who walked before us, so my stories, my pains and joys, may not necessarily or originally be mine, but they are mine now, since they were given me and I accepted them. This is part of art, the personal, the ownership, the self-responsibility for what is created. You see, we all build on what has been laid before us, and some of us even seek to be original. Granted, the more one pushes the envelope of originality, the more one is likely to find deeper pleasures, and deeper pains. However, originality is a broad arena with bunches of grey blobs floating around in the seas of oneself and the images that are created. This is a quandary, as we see more and more contemporary, pop artists appropriate more and more prefabbed, ready-made images while placing claims not on the images themselves, but on the use of those images – this is plainly called original use, and it is, regardless, art. Of course, it is an artist’s choice how bold he or she wishes to be, and how deeply they push or pursue this thing called originality.

The creative arts such as painting are craft, though they cannot be confused with other crafts or occupations such as plumbing. I say this as a qualified expert – I was a plumber/pipefitter in the San Diego shipyards for many years, and while I had always viewed that profession as a kind of industrial art, it could easily be distanced from my own self-identity and my personal needs. Good days and bad days would simply come to pass with each paycheck and promotion. The good would be appreciated and the bad banished from reality.

Painting, though, is a very personal thing, something that thrills both subtly and blatently, and an artist’s activities can haunt one throughout the nights, removing any preconceived notions of what sleep, or rest, is. Art, to the creator, can gnash and gnaw beyond sensibility, it can chew at the edges of sanity, exposing a lunatic fringe in the fabrics of what we each define as reality – all this whether one likes it to, wishes it to, or not. Nobody ever went crazy trying to fit a pipe.

This is where therapy, the actual subject of this essay, steps up to bat. Cesar A. Cruz needs be credited with coughing up the “Art either comforts the disturbed or disturbs the comfortable,” saying, or something such-like along those lines. Sorry to say, it was NOT Banksi deserving credit for this one as has been cited, but then nor is it me, or John Beluchi for that matter. Of course, maybe Banksi did say something similar in paraphrase, and he’s credited with that. He is, after all, known for appropriation bordering on the deep end of piracy, specifically taking of the works of French stencil artist Blek LeRat, who as a proper French bonne-homme, holds no resentment towards those enemies of the hundred years war, nor their descendants, which includes Banksi. It could be added that with all the permutations of paraphrasing of what is now an inexact phrase, I also might have said something similar, and so may also be falsely or otherwise quoted for another something such-like. Originality be damned!

So, lets get to the grist of the mill, or the gist of the meat, the meat of the matter, or the matter of the deal, or whatever it is that’s said. Let’s just get off the pot and get to it!

Some say that art is, or can be, therapuetic. I’ll end it all here before I recommence. Art is NOT therapeutic for me, as an artist (I did mention that I’d be speaking as artist here). I do wonder if that’s what some artists might say just to suck others into the creative activities. “Paint, and thou shalt be healed,” it is to them. Be one of us – join the church of the starving artist. Celebrate with us while we feign misery, for its in our misery that we seek and crave company. It seems to be the one and only prerequisite to becoming one of the creative types. All that’s just a bit too dramatic for me.

I’ll say it again – art is not here for my healing. If I’m in a bad way, during those times when I would or should most need the help of a good therapeutic jolt, I cannot, and will not, paint. I need to be inspired to paint, which fortunately is a near daily thing. My work deserves my best, and if I’m in some kind of debilitating funk, I’m not about to pick up a brush and risk something that could be great just to make myself feel better. That is what therapy is about, isn’t it – finding some way of coming to terms with whatever various emo-things arise with those monsters that pursue us through the days and nights of our lives?

Therapy involves finding some way of understanding those things, those painful weirdnesses about ourselves, ultimately for one reason only, and that’s to feel better about feeling inadequate, feeling less than perfect, and feeling pretty much all fucked-up. Art, however, is here for me as a seeker, as someone who just wants to know whats inside himself and whats outside waiting to come in so that it can be brought out, into this world. I don’t need to heal those things – I just need to share them.

It’s all just folly, isn’t it? We’ll never be perfect as long as were looking for something else in this world, as long as we’re seekers, and we will always find inadequacies in ourselves as long as we think we’re imperfect – its a basic feedback loop, and life itself is the therapy to this conundrum, this pain – art isn’t.

Art, however, is here for me as that seeker, for I look for things and I find them, I have not yet arrived at the ultimate truth. I find what’s included and I find what’s missing, all within and beyond this package called me and the universes and multiverses. Basically, I’m someone who just wants to know whats inside myself, what’s been hidden in that strange abyss of subconciousness. I want to know what’s out there that hasn’t yet been brought in so that it can be shared. I know that to be an artist, I don’t need to heal those things that arise as a result of this process, that can be done independent of the art. Art is simply self-expression, and it includes the strengths and the weaknesses of its creator, it doesn’t try to change them. If it did, it wouldn’t be such an honest activity. It matters not if I feel better about myself when the great work is finished, and I must be inspired regardless.

That’s not to say that other things in our lives can’t serve needed therapuetic purposes, but speaking as a painter about the activity of painting, I cannot see this creative pursuit as something that exists to make me feel better, and even if it might result in that from time to time, it is not my purpose to seek anything like this in pursuing art itself.

Sure,”making” art can be a pleasurable thing, this slinging paint around thing, though its nothing so deep or profound to make such a big deal of it. Really, for me, its something that just must be done, like eating – I’m compelled, driven, to express these things which in some cases may not (as mentioned before) even be mine. I exist for the image to be, and that’s that – everything else is secondary. My pains, my growth, my understanding of myself, my skills, my weaknesses – all these things are ultimately irellevant to that one thing – the birth of a painting. If I’m to serve that purpose, I’ve got to be on my game. I’ve got to be the best I can be given continually changing circumstances, which includes everything I come to the table with. If I can’t perform, I’ve got to be able to recognize that, and not reach towards my paints and brushes. There are times that I cannot even bear to look at whatever my current project might be its meant to be – sometimes a painting needs its privacy to gestate, I must honor that need. If I need to find my way back to that painting, it will be done in due time. Meanwhile, there are always other canvasses to work and play with – I’m never with one canvas alone. As Stephen Stills said, you just got to love the one you’re with, and so it is with paintings.

So then, let me try this one again – my work, my creations, don’t exist for me. They exist for themselves, complete and autonomous to all things except to be as you, the viewer, wants them to be. In a sense, I also am a viewer, no different than all others who view these things. We all need that painting to be as we need it to be for us, for ourselves, and only for ourselves. We are all one and the same – there is no artist, all things artise and there are only witnesses to this coming-to-be, and art, well, art is art, its all just art for art’s sake.

Let me also say this – it really is a pleasure for me to play that role I play in seeing these things into this world (much like an usher), and showing these things to you (much like a conductor). These things demand that from me. All through it, I’m just a conduit – a channel for a particular, colorful and maniacal, magical current to flow, and it brings with it a peculiar and particular thrill that I love, even if that thrill is secondary, and just a by-product of that painful thing called birthing a painting.

Serving as note – I’ll freely admit that I was enjoying the act of punctuating while writing this one, particularly the dropping in of the commas. If one were to be entered into a competition for creating the longest sentence in the history of mankind, one would need a generous supply of commas. I’ve even been known to repeat myself (see above), just to have an opportunity to use more commas. I’ll admit, however, that I should probably have checked my grammar and structure to minimize such use before publishing, but decided that I’d leave all as is and do a proper count only out of curiosity. It turns out that at just over 1,600 words in this short essay, I’ve used over 120 commas. One writer’s manual (the only one I checked) allows for 63 commas per 1,000 words – that’s 6.3 per one hundred, or in my case, an allotment of 101 commas is given (rounded up) for my 1,600 words, which puts my final figure heavy in the quantities of said quota, but, in all things statistical, we must sometimes shrug our shoulders at a 20% Texas excess and ask just this – “Who’s counting, anyways?”*