human roots and frivolous art

Panel of the lions, Chauvet Cave, France 27k to 32k years ago

I'm 40. I think I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil. What I've been interested in creating has changed over the years, but the impulse to use a tool to represent from my mind, from reality something -- anything -- really has not changed at all. I'm not musical, but I can imagine it is the same for people who need to sing or play an instrument. Or to dance. Maybe it is a similar impulse to birds needing to sing. Creating something to bring attention to how you see the world.

I'm thinking of this because I found some old drawings of mine and my daughter's this morning. I can hold them, examine them and the moment from when they were made feels fresh and immediate. So, maybe the impulse is to record the moment, create a memory. Polariods. Kodachrome.

impulses of a mother and daughter

I'm a Montessori teacher and one of the benefits of my job is I get to watch children create art everyday. I'm doubly blessed in that I get to work with children from 2 years to 5th grade and I can watch how that creation manifests through out the developmental process. The subjects change. The feelings about the finished work change, but I wonder if that which drives the person to make art changes all that much. I don't even know if the impetus is definable... it seems like it comes from somewhere pre-verbal, somewhere before the need for grammar or labels. I do know often children are driven to make art before they can manage a complete a sentence (or even words in some cases).

Recently, I learned about Chauvet Cave in Southern France. The discovery of this cave pushed back our reckoning of the earliest known representative art by human beings, with the belief of archeologists being that some of the paintings could have been done as early at 32 thousand years ago. There were Neanderthals roaming around Europe at that time, competing for scarce food. There was an ice age going on. Lions, hyenas, bears and wolves were trying to eat the people. The people were trying eat the deer, boars and aurochs (who really didn't want to be eaten and made those humans work really hard for their supper.) There was no agriculture, no cities, probably not even anything resembled even a village. There may have been as few as 1000 humans total in Europe and Asia. Life was seriously hard and dangerous. And still people wanted to go paint in caves.

That is a powerful impulse.

Growing up, I was led to believe, both implicitly and directly, that making art was sort of frivolous. Even a waste of time.

I can't believe that to be true now. Our human urge to create art was so strong it found expression even when humanity was on the brink of extinction, when the average human life span might have been as young as 10 years old. In fact, I believe it is possible that art is how humans survived -- the evolutionary advantage. Expression, bonding together, finding inspiration in the creations of others and showing a view of reality that transcends or transforms disappointment, brutality and fear.

when it's terrible. bad. sucky. yuck. crap.

copyright 2012 Tricia Larese

I started revamping this painting this week. I had thrown it in my closet about a month ago, annoyed with how flat it felt and how dark the layers of glaze were. I was very discouraged, because this composition started out as a sketch I loved. It then became an under-painting on the canvas I like quite a lot. And in the space of a couple of afternoons it transmogrified into crap.

I teach art to elementary students, and not a class goes by where one of the artists brings me his work in frustration, on the verge of wadding it up or otherwise destroying it. I usually ask him to take it back to his table and just consider it for a few minutes. Maybe this will show him the way he needs to take the piece next. About 7 times out of ten, the student will get back to work and make their piece into something new or better.

It would be too easy if I took my own advice, now, wouldn't it? When I don't like my art, I hide it away in a dark corner of my closet. I gesso over its offending image. I've even ceremoniously burn a piece. (I'm artist. I'm given to grand and/or over dramatic gestures.)

But that was last year. And it was last year when I thought this painting was crap.

Now, it's this year. This year I push forward and through. This year I turn crap into... something. I don't know if I'll like it yet. But I'm considering it. I'm gonna definitely take it somewhere new.

My question to you is: What do you do when you think a piece of your art is terrible? Do you wish you did something different when that happens. Do you have something lurking in a closet or drawer begging you to consider it?

~Tricia

known

copyright Tricia Larese 2012

This is a section of a painting I finished this week called, "Bodhichitta and Her Best Red Dress".

I sort of make a lot of art, and for many years, I just stashed that art in portfolios hidden in closets, in stacks of canvases in the garage, in boxes under the bed. Very occasionally I would give a piece to a family member, but generally I would just find a place to tuck it away.

I think I just considered art my hobby. Actually, I know I considered it that. And on some level it always felt a little sad. Because making art really isn't a hobby, it's a necessity. My life is grayer and plainer without it. It's a good thing in my life. Frankly, it keeps me happy and sane better any antidepressant could.

So, I'm done hiding it in closets or under beds. This year, I get my work "out there." I'm not totally sure what that means, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. I'm a smart girl.

Do you make art? Do you hide it away? Does it feed you that way?

It did me for a long, long time. I'm ready for something different now.

~Tricia