The Art Institutionalized

I attended the Art Institute of Seattle in the early to mid 90's. Fortunately, the entire chain of them is no longer around to the best of my knowledge.

There are many things out there that artists will hear about from many different highbrow institutions (see above) and self-proclaimed art experts about how to make art 'properly' - and most of the standard color wheel, composition, rule of thirds terminology that you hear about is for design, not art. In its truest form, art is an expression. In my opinion, that is exactly why I believe children to be the best artists. They have absolutely zero fear of criticism about what they create.

I want to make it clear that I do believe that there are aspects of art that can be taught - for example, there are plenty of fantastic tips and insights to learn from Betty Edwards' "Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain". As for me personally, I have been fortunate enough in life to cross paths with some fantastic teachers that understood me enough to support and offer deeper understanding of the concepts I was already practicing on my own. All of them were in my life during my formative years. Thankfully, their wisdom and influence survived the terrible experiences of 'art' school later on.

One of my instructors at the Art Institute, and I will never forget this, actually said to the class "Why should I teach you anything? You'll just leave here as my competition." It was a class on teaching perspective drawing, which in terms of ridiculousness is about a 9 on a scale of 10. After all, if you go to their terrible school, you probably have a fair idea about the concept of perspective. I learned more skipping that moronic class and hanging out on the waterfront of Elliott Bay when I was 19. Fuck that place, and history proved that place did in fact, fuck itself 24 years later.

The Art Institute wasn't even very good at instructing artists how to market themselves (or much of anything else, for that matter), which would have actually been infinitely helpful. Artists are inherently introverted empaths that care deeply about others but do their best to avoid them, so we need help putting ourselves out there. The Art Institute wasn't effective in either the art or graphic design arena. There is a very technical, proven way to create an effective graphic design, and many ways they can differ even within that universe. Designing magazine ads is vastly different from signs. Signs are not the same as websites. Logos need to be easily recognizable - not intricate works of art. Different applications require different methods. Graphic design utilizes some of the same principles as art and has artistic qualities, but it is not art in the traditional sense. Its a fuzzy line that most don't think about.

My main point is whether you have talent or not, learned or natural, if you are happy expressing yourself, that is all that matters. My entire collective lesson I have learned in life is that the best art instructor is the support of the people that love you.

I always say that as a parent, if your child wants nothing more than for you to sit at the table or on the floor with a half used box of crayons and slightly worn and bent blank sheets of paper grasped clumsily in small hands, start drawing. That next ten minutes or two hours will mean more than can ever be expressed in words.

Shock and Art

You know what I love most about independent artists of all kinds?

We don't give a flying fuck, and we don't have to. We keep it the way it should be - real. As fucking real as it can be - art, in any form, is the true heart and soul of the boots on the ground out in society. We are all fabulous freaks in our own way. We all have something to say, and if you're lucky you'll say enough to connect with others that understand enough of it to give you much needed emotional and spiritual backup.

The world is making it increasingly difficult to express your opinion - which, in the era of political correctness is the endgame. Assimilate or enjoy the random hate label you will undoubtedly be given by someone across the internet that has absolutely no personal knowledge of you or your journey. Art is the first victim in a world that is shocked by nothing and offended by everything. That is why I love all people that have the courage, ambition, and perseverance to see a project through. Fuck the system, and absolutely a double-middle-finger fuck to any fucking asshole that tries to fit your self expression into a fucking box.

Just think about this - the mid-1960's saw underground comics explode as a result of the sanitizing that was taking place at EC (and everywhere else). That era gave birth to the genius of Robert Crumb, Art Speigelman, Rick Griffin, and many many others. Combined, those guys drew more genitalia and tits than the entire internet. Sure, there were the Tijuana Bibles of the 30's and 40's, but no one could hold a candle to the talent of the underground comix revolution of that time. They were truly fearless in their satire, and they had the talent and wisdom to present it in a way that others could relate to. They took the unspeakable and spoke about it. Vividly.

These artists, and a lot of authors weren't simply expressing themselves. Some of them were prophetic. Watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and tell me that Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick weren't predicting the future of AI and singularity from 50 years away. Same goes for Orwell's '1984' or Huxley's 'Brave New World'. Art is anything but frivolous nonsense documenting the pointless excesses and whimsical depictions of everyday life. It holds so much more importance than that.

Rod Serling, who I consider a genius and arguably one of the best storytellers in human history, started a little thing in 1959 called 'The Twilight Zone' and in that show he put together (many written by himself) he was able to point out every phobia, fear, and anxiety that amounts to the entire human condition and feed it back to his viewers in a way that 60 years later you can still watch and relate to. The show has been remade with dismal results twice with each iteration trying to put a 'current' spin on it. The themes he covered were timeless. That isn't to say I don't appreciate the newer versions - I do. They have a message and I understand them trying to reach each generation.

That's the beauty of art - it is the essence of freedom. Movie studios are run by millionaires that have earned the right to stamp out terrible fucking reboots and cast Mark Wahlberg or Will Smith as a strange off worlder killing aliens or whatever the fuck they want. Let them reboot The Incredible Hulk 57 fucking times in 3 years - they look at the bottom line. Let the artists with wealthy benefactors paint and mass produce shit for hotel lobbies and wall pieces that match some asshole's sectional. Again, they're looking at the bottom line.

Independent artists don't. We don't have to. We look at the things we find important, and we have the freedom to do so. We will never have the approval of the mainstream media.

Thank fucking goodness for that.

Shocked by nothing, offended by everything.

Through the Fire and the Frames

Through the Fire and the Frames One of the key things about art as it pertains to me is its therapeutic nature. I literally vibrate with anxiety all day. For me to eat soup with a spoon is like a coked up, incontinent ferret trying to play 'Operation'. I'm also an insomniac with depression issues. Now - as fun as all of this is to deal with in everyday life, the depression, anxious tremors, crippling fear, and exhaustion all evaporate from me the minute the nib of the pen hits the bristol.

This is why whenever someone sees one of my art pieces with literally millions of dots the size of an ink dipped hair, they ask, "I don't know how you do it," and I answer immediately with, "I don't know how I'd do without it." And I am dead serious.

Art is, always has been and always will be my best friend and safest escape from the world and the fools that populate a great deal of it. In art there are no bills, no disagreements, petty passive aggressive behavior, or hidden agenda.

I don't see it as 30 - 40 hours of time going into an art piece as a way to make money or promote myself. I look back on it as 1800 or 2400 minutes where my mind and body were at peace from the miserable rigors, have-tos, and annoyances of everyday life. It would be perfect if I could stay home and someone could pay me to draw, paint or engrave whatever I felt like and never expect me to show up anywhere. Honestly, for a depressed person it would be easier to stay in that bed you sleep 40 minutes out of an 8 hour night in than face the day - I am not bullshitting here. You are amazingly resilient if you suffer from depression and you do battle with everyday life. Some days I swear it would be easier to try and stuff a honey badger into a pillowcase than try to eke out a pathetic 'good morning' to your friends and coworkers that you work with and see every day.

When I'm drawing, painting, or engraving and grinding I am a different me in a different universe. My nervously tapping feet lay peacefully on the floor. My breathing is regulated. The back that suffers from age and weight doesn't hurt. The radio in my head turns itself off, my face relaxes, and my mask crumbles and falls to the floor. I am at peace. No laughing, no pain, no sadness. My body, mind, and soul relax for as long as it takes to do what it needs to do.

Art puts me in a comforting and meditative place. So much that the only other person in the room could be talking and I won't even notice. I get so into watching the ink slowly but consistently transfer from the pen to the surface, I'm literally hypnotized.

If you haven't ever done so, I would encourage you to take a nice pen (all of my pen and ink pieces are done with micron 005's) and set it sofly on a piece of paper. Right in the middle - and just start drawing lines and making shapes. If you see something in those shapes that needs shading, go ahead and do it. The shapes can add up to anything or be anything you would like. Maybe you will like what you turn out, maybe you won't - but do take comfort in this - and this is very important: Your own opinion is the only one that matters here. It is terribly unfortunate that a lot of people fear the judgement that comes with the territory of self expression. Don't worry - it happens to professional artists all the time. Occasionally I will do something that didn't really turn out the way I wanted, and I'll have a little internal monologue about how the horse I painted looks like a hamster vandalizing a doughnut while someone comments that its the most beautiful thing they've ever seen.

As I stated earlier, there are a great deal of fools in the world, but there are honestly a lot of good ones as well that will support you no matter what. Keep those people and stay true to yourself. Just make sure that whatever you create you create for yourself -

Every Which Way but Lucid

Its my belief that fear and contentment are very close to each other - so close that there are undetectable details between the two in some cases. Unrecognizable even to the person dancing on the edge between them. This allows artists to have some fun.

Take a walk down a sunlit path and notice the slight breeze twisting the birch and alder leaves at the ends of their moss laden branches. A mostly dry trail, save for the few odd puddles from a rainstorm a day earlier that's left a refreshing ghost in the air. All of a sudden you realize that the trail you've been traveling leads you right back to a familiar place from your past - a small farm weathered from years of abandonment with its many outbuildings left to decay.

You know the farm, but there are many details that have changed slightly. The small apartment above the barn is still there but you know not to take the stairs to the loft. It may be locked, it may not - you only know that you shouldn't go there for some reason. In the time you've stood studying the apartment, you realize you were actually outside looking in the whole time and there's a curious trail you never noticed that winds into the underbrush behind it. You take the trail because you have a message needing to be passed to someone on that trail - someone recognizable - you aren't sure who yet, but there is still comfort in that it is someone familiar.

The further you go down the trail, the more you realize you may never actually want to leave this place - this was your home at one point, and you aren't sure why you ever left. There is a lot of property here, and you can seemingly get to anywhere you want just by staying at the family farm.

Almost without warning you find the old friend you were looking for in a clearing, squatted down by a tree. He lives there now and doesn't appear to be as interested in you being there as you are to be there. After a few unpleasant exchanges made more through looks and noises than words, you realize the friend you've been talking to isn't your friend at all - possibly. Their face and expressions are not the same as they were. In fact, it isn't your friend but rather someone you don't know at all. Knowing not to make the situation worse, you run back down the trail to the place you know is familiar. It didn't seem to take as long to get back as it did to leave.

There still isn't anyone at your former home, which is both unsettling and somehow comforting at the same time. You run up the stairs into the loft you would never have gone in before, only to realize that its a much larger area than you thought was possible; the size of a large dining hall, or maybe a temple of some kind. Standing at what you assume to be at the front of the temple is a person with familiar mannerisms with their back to you - yelling, or trying to, you fail to get their attention enough for them to even turn around in acknowledgement.

Then you wake up.

As an artist, you are usually at your most creative when you're mind is simply coasting - closest to that point in the day when your brain will just be entertaining itself by updating and downloading shit from the cloud while your body takes a break from the things its done, and has yet to do.

The human brain's gift to us are these 5 to 20 minute episodes that feed on our terrors, beliefs, memories, and collective life experience, (good and bad) that it sometimes gives back to us our own fear wrapped in the contentment of something familiar to us.

A lot of the creatures and things I've drawn and painted over the years are inspired by unsettling dreams I've had. Its why I think fear and contentment are so close. There is always a balance between the two for me, and the line is very thin between them.

As an artist, I can appreciate those slight little changes, or devils, in the details.

‘Ravenous’ - completed 2014 Pen & Ink - pointillism.

Joker 2019

Smoke and Mirrors

Creative people are a lot like smoke - we simultaneously shift with and illustrate the environment around us. We retain our shape and form, but can never do it in the same exact way twice. The slightest movement of air, breath, or change in temperature can point to where we will go next, but we will always be there in some way or another as long as the fire burns.

That is the true test of being an artist. Keeping that creative fire burning.

This is also one of the difficulties of earning a living as a creative. I have dedicated over half of my life at this point to being a graphic designer, and I spend 8 hours a day having my creations scrutinized, criticized, and most of the time, deleted or changed entirely into a grotesque hybrid of several peoples' ideas. The only relief I have in all this, is that though I get paid to use my skills, my skills aren't me. My unchecked, unadulterated, unhinged, unabridged expressions and creations and works in the wee hours of the night are me.

It isn't a strange or uncommon feeling to have in a creative field. I had a discussion once with a watercolor painter one day at lunch, and we started discussing how it stops being relaxing and therapeutic when you cross the line from being an artist to being an interior decorator. You draw or paint what you want when you want. If you're lucky, someone will appreciate or share your vision. If not, they will more than likely feed you pedestrian compliments and end the interaction with you by telling you it doesn't match their couch.

My advice to younger artists is always to steer away from careers that put a price on your creativity - at least while you’re young. Art is a very personal experience for the creator, and because of the inherent emotional insight that many artists have, putting yourself up for constant criticism can be disheartening. It opens a door for the world to kick sand into your fire. To be honest, it took years for me to not take the daily criticism personally, and on bad days I still do.

If you are an artist you have an emotional attachment to your work and how you present it. The superficial and shallow nature of an increasingly uncaring, non personal and disassociated world makes it extremely difficult for you to even want to put yourself out there. If you are in the marketing/advertising business a lot of money is riding on someone else's opinion of what will be successful, and because you are dealing with non artistic types, its that money and opinion that talks. That can take a mighty hammer to a large portion of your self worth if you aren't careful.

That isn't to say its all a bad thing of course - sometimes it will take that to force you to walk through your own fire and step out of the ashes as a re-imagined self confident creative beast. In my case, that which didn't kill me made me stranger - and for a creative person that is the greatest gift you can ask for. I still have moments in the cold, and you will too.

Use what you can from the outside criticism as fuel. As for the complaints of the shallow and superficial ones?

Throw them in the fire.

Of Flies and Shadows

One of the things I enjoy about details are the brief moments frozen by light that burn into my brain. Sometimes, as an artist I enjoy watching a fly crawl across my arm or the table just to see the stunted and somewhat robotic pace; the slight turning of his head and the sun glistening off the iridescence of his wings.

The intricate, symmetrical organic patterns that make up this miniscule machine can fascinate you if you let them, just as the way a shadow falls across a set of stairs and railings on an overcast day with high winds will constantly change yet never repeat the exact same pattern twice. Or throw a small rock into a muddy puddle and watch in wonder as the concentric circles ring out from the point of contact and take notice of the swirling chaotic beauty taking place in the depths that will never break the shimmering surface, but instead will relax and calmly settle back into place.

Now, freeze any of those images. Imagine yourself in that actual moment. You should have a well enough idea of how to picture it - that's good. The real question, (and there is obviously no correct answer here) as it pertains to art, is how do you feel it? Do you see it in black and white? Is it in brilliant colors? A still image or rolling like a film? Is it a positive experience, or a somewhat negative one? Even though the description has been given, the processing and internalizing of the image is truly up to the beholder.

For example, earlier, when I mentioned the shadow falling across the stairs and railings on an overcast day - when you picture this in your mind, do you see at as yourself standing in the foyer of a victorian era mansion with the mottled sunlight dancing across the hardwood stairs and bannister, or are you an observer to a gray overcast day as a condemned man takes his final march up to the gallows on the weathered steps? Art is all about personal interpretation, processing, and execution (pun intended there).

To anyone reading this, I would like to issue a challenge this week. Regardless of how you feel about your technical artistic skills, I would like you to freeze a moment in time and soak in the entire sensory experience. It might inspire you to think, write, draw or paint - all of which are acceptable expressions and the very definition of art.

Even if you sit down with a coloring book, realize that everything you do from the first colored pen or pencil you pick up and the first area you decide to color was done because of how you felt about it, because I would seriously doubt that anyone who does is thinking about how they're going to turn that page into a triadic or split complementary color scheme as it pertains to the color wheel. You chose it because you liked that color, felt like using it and used it on the first section you felt like on that picture. Be the fly. Be the miniscule machine and fascinate yourself with this massive, beautiful, colorful, brilliant, and terrifying world we live in. Process it. Draw it. Express it.

Use your iridescent wings.