mcauleyhouseartists: Giving Thanks

Monday, December 1, 2014

Giving Thanks

Painting by Anthony

Artists at work

The art group has many things to be thankful for- we still have funding for our program thanks to our supporters and the Rhode Island Foundation. We also give thanks for our volunteers that have donated their time as well as supplies for the program. We also have said our goodbyes and thank yous to our long time Art advocate and House Administrator of 10 years. We wish Reverend Mary Margaret all the best in her new position.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving I am grateful that most of our participants are healthy and slowly finding housing, and those that have housing are finding stability and support from their community.
As a group we are all grateful for each other and often remember those that are no longer with us.
I recently came across this photo of a painting by the late Richard Jacobellis. Even though Richard has been gone for a while now we still talk about him and how funny and thoughtful he was. This was Richard's last big painting before he died. He loved doing silly portraits of TV stars and Pop legends and local politicians. So, we give thanks for Richard and all that he brought to our group.

About the Art Program

5 Ways to Grow as an Artist

So how would a Cassatt or a Henri or Picasso approach painting differently than we do today? How might this heartfelt fear of others controlling our painting process impact our self-understanding as artists? Here are five possible answers:

1. Making a successful picture is not the goal. Think of periods, such as childhood, when we grew, our self-understanding changed and we became more of who we are. There was an endless stream of events where we expressed ourselves and slowly began to discover the things that pleased us. As with the sense of freedom characterized above, the entire payoff was growth. The events of life when we grow are the things that happen along the way. Making art should be exactly the same. Paintings are just the series of events or steps we take. Let them go. Keep moving. Or as Henri implored, “Keep living.”

2. The painting process is always a beginning. As soon as the freshness evaporates (we are bored or lost or acquire interest in something else), stop. Do not think in terms of finishing. Picasso lectures eloquently on this. Finish is the death of our work because it means we are painting an expectation or “to be like” and that puts the brakes on painting to see and feel more deeply. Every beginning is a new prompt, a new point of departure. Begin everything. Finish nothing.

3. Ignore non-artist authorities. Juries, the grantors, the gallery, the direction from above are just so many fingers in our pie. All external measures are dangerous because they not only push us to performing, as opposed to creating, but their sense of worth takes over our own. This is precisely what Parisian artists fought against.

4. Get into a prolonged creative process. Have dozens of paintings in your studio that have been abandoned for one reason or another, left in various stages, unfinished but always complete as expressions of who you were at that moment. Work on several paintings simultaneously. You are not making shoes.

5. Furnish the world with your beauty, let the world see, touch and feel who you are. Scary I know. It is so much easier to hide within safe fortresses, the sources of praise and dignity that we can count on by pleasing our audience. This is the dreaded condition called style. We cannot be free to be who we are if we are not always risking being who we are in front of others.