Spring Cleaning Again, Artwork and Thoughts

This time it was my art work.  I’ve had it stashed away for years.  Actually, 30 years to be more precise.  I also had an itch to get it back out and do some new stuff, but then I got sidetracked again and lost interest.  Doing art is very much like writing or practicing music or other crafts.  It’s not much like software development, even though it may seem to be on the surface.  To do art or music right, even woodworking, you have to have emptiness.  Peace and quiet.  Time to let your cluttered thoughts evaporate and your mind can wander and cool things come out.

I think most people would find they have amazing creativity inside them if they had the chance to REALLY get bored and also be in the right environment to induce the creative outflow.  Sadly, most of us are just too busy.  The few minutes, even a few hours, we may occassionally get to “do nothing” we often spend idling with a mouse and a screen (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) even blogging.  Or watching TV or napping.  Or we find something to do like fixing things that need repair.  It’s all a sneaky distraction and keeps us from finding what we can truly do.

So I put my artwork on Facebook and shared it with a lot of people and that interesting.  I wasn’t looking for compliments.  I was really interested in seeing which pieces drew the most feedback.  Kind of measuring what forms and formats garnered the most interest and comments.  That, to me, is the most fascinating part of it.

But getting back to the “Spring Cleaning” topic: I decided to bequeath it all to my kids.  I just decided it was doing nothing for me to sit in the boxes and canvas art bags in a closet.  Now it can sit in their closets. :)  Some of it will get hung up or mounted properly (it’s been languishing in folders for too long).  It’s so-so.  Some pieces I’m proud of, but most of it is just interesting (to me, anyway).  I asked a museum curator to look at my portfolio and give an honest opinion.  That was interesting.  Her comments were a clear indicator that she didn’t really spend much time looking it over.  She said that since I focused a lot of my work on the human form, that I should take a few classes to hone that part of my skillset.  The irony is that very few of my works even include anything remotely “human form” by any stretch.  Maybe a hand or a face, but not very often.  Oh well.  I join the ranks of mediocre, which is not bad in itself.

In any case, my kids like it, and it has somewhat more intrinsic meaning to hand it down from parent to child obviously.  I’m not averse to doing more artwork in the future, but for now I simply can’t find the time to let my brain out to play.  It’s on too short of a leash.  I will be loading some images up on my Picasa site soon for public access.  I should have it uploaded in the next few days.