Doing What I Came Here For
Pieces of my Mind #5
I have a special ability that is unknown to most people—and that’s best for their protection.
It’s not super human strength and I can’t shoot lasers out my eyeballs. Instead, I can control the weather. It’s true! Once, after suffering through a winter of shoveling snow with a spade, I purchased the highest quality snow shovel available in anticipation of the following season’s snowfall. It was wide mouth, all metal, sturdy, and ultralight. Fancy, even.
We received no measurable snow that season—or the one after.
New raincoat? Drought. Sunglasses? Cloudy. Sandals? Cold snap.
You’d think I’d learn, yet here I am with a brand new ten by ten foot canopy tent for my wife and I to catch up on our reading in the fresh air while being shielded from the harmful sun, and there is no sun. Only angry black clouds filled to bursting with lightning and rain. Nearly the entire month of May has been a washout or too cold and windy to sit outside.
We froze to death the one day our stubbornness got the better of our senses.
That’s living in the mountains. The dumb weather is just part of life and every bit as uncertain. And I’m really feeling that uncertainty right now because I’m in a familiar yet difficult stage of growth in my artistic development. Every few years, I need to reset and reassess what I’m doing and if it is serving my ultimate goal.
Which begs the question, what is my ultimate goal!
This, too, can change, but it seems most artist never stray to far from their original intent. For me, as are most things, it’s complicated by its simplicity.
I create to share the world and its inhabitants that are otherwise locked away in my head.
I want to bring them to life in a tangible way so that other people can experience them the way I do. You can feel the texture of a sculpture, turn it around, watch how shadows fall on it in different lighting. A painting captures the life and soul of its creator in every brushstroke, and the written word is the combined effort of my carefully chosen words and your imagination that’s pure magic. These are the vehicles I use to achieve my goal.
Limiting myself to one discipline is wrong, but it’s so easy to do.
Social media changed a lot of how we look at people and what we expect from them. Imagine if Leonardo da Vinci was on Instagram, posting away with his latest painting. Soon as he showed designs for a flying machine, he’d lose followers, get nasty comments, and feel compelled to concentrate solely on his paintings in order to maintain his followership. He’d be forced to dance like a good monkey for his peanuts…
Frankly, I have too much dignity and integrity to do that.
There’s also the unavoidable and often random demands of life. Being multidisciplinary allows me to craft my work around life rather than the other way around. I’d be living on the streets after this wet month if I were solely a plein air painter—oil and water don’t mix! On the other hand, if I need to clear a fallen tree from my property or run an errand for my disabled mother, I can more easily schedule work for the day that won’t require much time or focused attention.
A jack of all trades is better than a master of one, after all—especially if the one thing you’ve mastered is taken away from you due to age, injury, or a shift in the market!
Of course, it’s scary to go against the herd. I often suffer from imposter syndrome when I see artists I admire stick doggedly to one particular style or subject. I feel less than. But it’s been the accepted and expected formula for a long time. Find one thing you’re good at it and then market the hell out of it without deviation.
I’ve done that and it’s made me miserable. Any deviation from the thing I was known for resulted in my follower count going down. But the nice thing about not participating in the social media garbage is that I don’t care about followers.
My work and ideas deserve better and demand more than a 2 second glancing scroll through a newsfeed. If sharing a landscape one day and a grotesque monster sculpture the next is too confusing for someone to follow, then they weren’t ever going to understand me anyway.
Everyone wants to be punk rock until it’s time to go against the norms and do something that truly makes you stand out. It’s understandable. Blending in, conforming to what the world expects of you is safe. And it is safe. But punk rock ain’t about being safe. It’s a thrashing whirlwind of elbows and boots that may catch you in the ribs when you least expect it.
I’m ready for it. I’ve taken plenty of lumps over the years. What’s a bloody nose here and there if it means bucking expectations and living a life that’s true to yourself? And besides, I much prefer a leather jacket and jeans to a suit and tie.
If you’re here for that one particular thing that I do, know that you may have to suffer through all the other stuff I’m into before I get back to what you like. But I promise it’ll always be worth the wait. If you can’t handle that, it’s better we part ways now.
For everyone else, buckle up. It’s going to be one hell of a ride!
I love the book nook!
It won't be too long before you can sit outside :)
Good read!! Casey and you will be setting outside under the tent before summer is over.