An Artistic Life
When I was in 5th Grade my art teacher asked me, "Who is your favorite artist?" I thought about it for a moment and said with absolute conviction, "My dad!" "No, no" she shook her head. "I mean like Van Gogh, Dali, Picasso. You know real artists."
I didn't understand. My dad was a real artist. He made real art. if that doesn't make one a Big A Artist then what does?
People think of art as a job. You go to art school, get trained by the knowledge keepers and then get yourself an art job at ArtCo. If you're really good they'll put your work in museums some day. You’re not a real artist until art is paying your bills. They conveniently forget that Van Gogh died penniless. And he was one of the greats, the Van Goat if you will.
Art is a lifestyle. It is a thing you do because you can’t not do it. Sometimes I get an idea in my head and I just have to commit it to paper. It will eat at me. Its echo is in every thought. Its shadow cast on every action. I will be cutting onions, and I can see it as much as the onion, a haunted house built on an old caucasian golf course. I wander its halls absentmindedly. I hear the ghosts calling the cops on the new latino owner. It becomes realer than reality. I think about it, and think about it, and think, and… shit. I cut my hand. Art is a specter that haunts my dreams until I reach into my brain and force a tulpa into existence. It possesses me.
tulpa / ˈtʊlpə /
noun a being or object that is created in the imagination by visualization techniques such as in Tibetan mysticism
I rarely share my art with people because it’s not for them. I made it for me. It is only meant to appeal to my interests. If I wanted others to see it, I would have made it differently. If I draw a picture of my brother, I try to make it look good. The sketches in my notebook all look like shit. Because who cares? They’re my doodles. I’m not trying to impress anyone with them. It’s just something I do for fun. If I made art for money or clout, my entire approach would be different. But that’s not art, that’s a product. I ain’t no business man. I’m an artist. And I have ideas of my own.
I make art because making art is what I do. I do it for the same reason fish swim and birds fly.
”But what if Hitler got into art school and became a famous painter instead?”
It could never happen. He simply didn’t have the chops for it. No amount of schooling would have changed that. An artistic life isn’t a dress you try on before a night out. It’s a wedding ring you wear every day until you take it off for good. An artist makes art when people love it, they make art when people hate it. They make art in the schools and the prisons. They make art in the gutter with the needle in their arm and at the gallows with the noose around their neck. They make art from their first breath to their last. Because that’s what art is, a gasp for air in a suffocated world. You can step away from the page but you can never put down the pen. It is an extension of you, a sixth finger on your right hand. It is fundamentally who you are.