To begin, I have to say finishing this one was quite difficult, as was starting it, and writing it, and I realized that’s because i hadn’t really sorted my own feelings on the subject. I mean, like, how can you write when you don’t know what to write? How can you feel when you don’t know what you feel? Huh? How, I ask?

So, I figured on writing a 500 word preface which you’re reading this exact moment for a 1500 word essay which you’ll be reading in a minute, hoping that just might do the trick for me. This way, if I don’t know what to write, at least I got started and can begin counting those words.

So, there’s a guy I grew up admiring who was a writer, a famed, notorious and nefarious “letter to the editor” writer. His name was Walt Novak, and he devotedly wrote, and was assuredly published, every two months in the, as mentioned, “letters to the editor” column of the Surfer Magazine of times oh, so long ago. Walt was great – always stimulating, usually entertaining, not always understandable, nor understood, but never to be trifled with and never to be refused. He was highly respected by all and everyone of the surfer type from twelve years old and up and probably never got paid a cent for anything he wrote. This is a quality which I share with him.

Once upon a time, Walt said, “Write it once, and write it right.” I read this in a moment of complete clarity and lucidity, and it has forever been velcro-ed to a certain neuro-pathway in, you guessed it, my brain. Now, not only do I aspire to this maxim whenever I write, I also aspire to it when I paint. “Paint it once, and paint it right,” it is. This is, I emphasize, only something to aspire to, all the while accepting the fact that I’ll neverpaint it right the first time, only because I’m a layered-overpainter and paint-over-it to watch it develop kind of guy. I like the image I’m painting to reveal itself to me as a process unfolds. My work isn’t a known result or a rubber-stamp Rancho Cyacomongo subdivision kind of thing. It teaches me things as it grows, as a child might. That way, the character and the process of the painting stands as a partner with me while we dance together with colors on our skins. When a painting begins, I already know I don’t want to be the master or tyrant of this groovy and gooey medium I use called paint. My formula of aloofity is a vague, but caring thing, really.

So, here we are – Paint it once, and paint it right. I guess I say this only to lay a foundation for a short drama which will be found immediately after this long-winded prologemena. But, sharing this (this upcoming drama) is where I might find trouble. I cannot be so firm about the future, but if you have such a goal as to paint once and right, and you possess such a high falootin’ prophetic nature such as this, then the “as man plans, god laughs” syndrome will probably present itself to you at some point, even if you don’t admit it. But, if you truly have a great talent at not only planning, but sticking to those plans while you damn the torpedos, then you need read no further, and my respect for you is on my sleeve and my hat is off to you.

Now, if you will, please excuse me for a moment while I wind up for my pitch and get in the proper mood, the proper role, for this one. This may be just be the part of where the trouble starts for me, and so of course, I’ll begin now – if you are like me, then you are not only prone to, but revel in those things that in other’s cause emotional outbursts and histerical histrionics.

Oooufff – okay, sorry about that, but here’s where I step up with an immediate disclaimer to elaborate on my last comment – I’m not actually an all that dramatic kind of guy, but here will have decided that I am for god’s sake, and for crying out loud, though only for the specific purpose of writing this “tortured artist” post-card story. Please remember that the author, myself, is not so experienced in this matter, but long ago may ahve dabbled and at least toured around the neighborhood of a few specific hysterias in my younger days while the luxury of time allowed such deviations, so, if this kind of thing, this drama, is your forte (please, it’s not for-tay, just fort, and if you want to say it the French way you drop the “t,” so its just for with the “r ” ending with a gutteral kind of scratch, like you’re clearing your throat after a shot of warm -tequilla or dry pastis), then by all means, read on.

I can already see that taking a first-person, tongue-in-cheek stance on this one is going to prove to be quite risky, but here we go. Let the troubles begin in a genuine way.

Yes, I’m an artist. I demand absolute perfection from myself and all I create! Being an artist allows me a certain freedom of self-expression, and if I want to be a diva, or a prima donna, or anything else less gender specific, then so be it. You can’t take that from me. If I choose to suffer for my occupation, if I choose to dive deeply into pits of despair, if I choose to be so unstable as to call it necessity, then let me – I’m an artist, dammit. Look at me, but never understand me!

I’ll share my world with you now, my ego-driven world that I am slave to. I’m a real piece of work, I’ll tell ya. I know of my own greatness even if others don’t. When I pick up a brush and load it with paint, I know the success of my painting is guaranteed right out of the gates – it’ll be a masterpiece! Even in its conceptual stage, I just know I’m on to something so great that the earth will rise up and the seas will shake that earth that just rose up just to ensure that the will of all-that-is is done to fulfill my pained destiny.

But, in the dark corners of my little room, the place where I hide when I fail, sometimes, maybe even more often than not, things show themselves to be quite uncertain. How could I torture myself if this weren’t so? How could I be an artist if I didn’t create demons to haunt me, How could I impress other with the skill of a self-lie if I didn’t lie about my own weaknesses?

What is this darkness? What is failure, after all? A sketch can not pan out as what it seems to be in line form once color is added. Color reveals shapes in a composition that might just be irreconcilable. However, I have heard that with the lighting executed with expert laying on of tints and shades just so (as professional painters are known to do), any and all compositions, good or bad, will show themselves as museum quality, classic, fine-art. This I am not certain of, nor am I certain of the author of this dubious comment. I’m not even sure if I can agree, but am relatively certain that I do disagree with such rubbish or I would never experience such pain as frequent failure provides. Of course, if by some strange turn of events happen, such as those seas shaking and those earths rising, and I or someone else someday sees my work in a museum, then I might just have to change my mind and agree with this precept. I will say this, though, whether I agree or disagree with said comment, since I have never expeienced such, I am probably unqualified to do so. For now, I cannot admit to my public or my entourage that failure is possible, but when I am alone, I will admit, unequivocally, that I’m a failure, will never be otherwise, and am destined to be led by my fragile but overpowering ego through lifetimes until I become nothing.

Okay, drama said and done – the fiction has been revealed and developed, and I must now seat myself where I belong. I am, after all, a practical man. I’m gounded and not so attached to that little reality of the ego-driven artist. I’m not, after all that, a drama-boy and I only seek mild levels of happiness in relation to paint. Paint is what I do and that’s that. I feel I do it well and that’s the reward in itself, and while I might wish that others find it to be good shit, if they don’t, I continue to paint.

So, can I be helpful to others here? Can I answer this timeless question that artists always seem to ask at some or another point? What is one to do, or what can one do, when one finds themselves facing definitive failure? With this, I’m not talking some pie-in-the-dirt, fanciful, what-if future or even just-around-the-corner, impending failure, but immediate, undeniable, complete and utter failure looking you right in the face, here and now.

I’ve quoted or paraphrased classic quitch painter Odd Nerdrum before with the words “A painting is finished (or successful – my addition) when nothing can be done to improve it.” I’ve also said that the inverse is also true – a painting is finished (or failed) when nothing can be done to improve it. If the second is the case, what is to be done? Analysis of the situation and the painting in question might determine the bin is to be used promptly, but it might be determined that something can be done, which would prove one mistaken in thinking that “nothing can be done.” This has happened to me quite often.

Of all the potential failures, if one is a painter, the most common normally happens during the application of paint on some support, and the later in that process this occurs, the more likely one will feel the devastation and desolation caused by the loss of self-worth that’s attached to outcome, to all the dreams-of-success of tha given canvas. So, let me ask you this. Is this despair so needed – is it necessary?

The life of an artist should be no different than any other self-employed professional, be it plumber, architect, chef, or shoemaker – but it is. The starving, desperate, turmoiled, emotionally unstable artist thing ta-kes a precedence over any other option that we can perceive while not making an income. As an aside, and the strange thing is, that when those professions are not earning, they are just people who are not earning, and that’s it – they are simply out of work. Have you ever heard a plumber guy refer to himself as a starving plumber? NO! So why is an artist who is not making a living called a starving artist? We all starve if we don’t work. The starving artist is a myth – its an invention that we put in place so we ourselves can perpetuate some romantic idea of complete and utter failure being better than just saying we’re out of work. As an artist, I’m not unemployed, I’m a miserable failure, and so is my work! Hmmm… this just don’t make sense.

So yeah, when you’re in this state and you realize the paradigm of the failing artist doesn’t need to apply to you, then you’re ready to step up and start facing those demons and buck on up out of it. This is a work in itself, this bucking up, but bucking up isn’t painting, it stands independent to your chosen occupation as an artist, but until you do that personal work, until you reach a point in your climb back to who you are, you are not ready to get back to it. You cannot create until you recreate yourself, Go through your shit if you wish, or realize too that you need not to. Wallow in your misery and tell yourself that it builds character, mettle and strength, and that experience like this will help you to grow. Heave , hem and haw in all these histrionics until the cows, or whatever they are, come home to roost, then put your painters cap back on, or your apron, your Birkenstocks, or whatever it is you wear to make you feel like a painter, and slap that paint around. Forget your agendas and pour yourself out with that paint. Empty yourself like you are a tube of paint, for it is not so much paint that’s on your canvas, but you. It is you on that canvas and nothing else, and the purer you that shows, the you without all that garbage we carry around with us, the more honest your work will be. Once you’ve put purest part of you that you want on that canvas, do it again, and again, and again. When you go into your studio, leave your crap at the door – I can’t emphasize this enough. Our crap is irellevant to our painting.

So, and thus sadly, a painting can fail at any point in its development, and it might just be that the later it happens in the process, the more horrifying it is, but disabling to its creator need not be, and it may not be because you’ve got some baggage. Your purest you can still make a mess from time to time. I have said earlier that I’m relatively certain that I do disagree with such rubbish that a good painter can make anything succeed, that a paintings’ failure just doesn’t need to be. Some paintings just fail, and when they do, it doesn’t mean one is untalented, or a bad artist. Just let it go, move on, and stop trying so hard, or you’ll find that forcefullness of determination can drive all grace out of one’s life and work. Remember too, regardless of how one feels about a completed painting, it is exactly as it was meant to be, exactly as it wished itself to be. An artists path is as much one of acceptance as it is one of creation.

So, don’t get me wrong. I can feel like crap on multitudes of levels with the best and worst of them, but when I do, I refuse to paint. Hell, even entertaining such an idea never even enters my mind, so for art to exist as a quantifiable therapeutic value, well, its just not for me. Ultimately, I just wish not to corrupt that which is squeezed out of me.