This website has gone through many phases, but in its last incarnation was a focus on my photographic work. I really wished I could have pursued was the art work I started. It was, at the time, maybe the most real thing I have ever attempted to do. But with the ever-exhausting pursuit of money I could no longer justify the time.
And then things changed. I changed, the world changed. Artificial intelligence is here. And it made me to reconsider what I was doing from an creative perspective and what I wanted to do. I had done these digital pieces, wind, fire, water, all I needed was earth. I knew what it looked like, but I couldn’t figure out how I was going to do it. Now I think the window has closed. AI closed it for me. All that work seems like a folly now when I could have just prompted for something that was even better than my own vision.
I fully believe that within this new emerging world, there is a place for artists. I think a subset of people will increasingly long for authenticity and depth. A search for a mirror. As as we become more and more fragmented and disconnected, more connection perhaps. A reassurance that we are not as alone as we probably actually are in this universe.
Or not. Humans’ ability to adapt is remarkable. I believe this adaptation starts with our perception, how our personal lens on the world frames things, and the way in which we justify our actions, and the way in which we normalize our experiences. Maybe art is becoming an esoteric indulgence. Maybe it always was. Or maybe, as I hope it is, art becoming wound into our entertainment.
But even if it us, I worry that perhaps, instead, the audience for art is changing. Some of us, a lot of us, have developed this insatiable need for ) entertainment, or is it stimulation, or is it distraction, or is it boredom relief). The things that affect and move us, the way art can do, do. But then it also float on by in the rushing stream of content. The work that gives you pause for thought is quickly replaced by the next thing, and then the next. There is no real time for reflection. Do we even want to reflect?
It’s not that we have fundamentally changed. It’s that we are faced with an onslaught of emotional experiences we simply aren’t equipped to process in real-time. We swing from the cutest baby rabbits to video replays of people being gunned down in the streets—granting a silent permission to the rise of hatred and the objectification of everyone around us. These are the hidden forces of psy-ops, manipulating us like marionettes on strings. We don’t even realize it’s happening, yet there we are: scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. We scroll, we do this for breaks.
Then, exhausted, we retreat into the safety of the loop. More baby rabbits, please. Oh, that was funny. Look at that amazing talent. Oh my god, that’s so sad. Oh my god, that’s CRAZY! And yes, that ad—that’s new, where can I get that? Whoo, a roller coaster. We become vulnerable, we become lead to places we might not have gone. But then the roller coaster of it gets numbing.
There will always be people who are set apart: The thinkers, sensors and observers of this world who see and who develop thought provoking commentary. But I also don’t rule out that our society and our culture as a whole will look unrecognizable in an alarmingly short period of time. But then, nor do I rule out that the architects of this current coordinated chaos, who profit from our division and thrive on our distraction, will eventually be struck by the very pendulum they set in motion.
I find all these things deeply fascinating. I feel we are in the center of a very turbulent time in history. I feel a bit more thrill than I know I should. But is there a role for art in all this? Or is this just more distraction?
I was left with the question of art that I don’t even know how to articulate. Are we in the sunset period of it, or is it just me? I was already doubtful of the purpose of it except as it is wound into film and television and music. This unasked question is challenging for me. Because in those quiet dark moments I’ve had, after a few glasses of wine or maybe something else, when I really get brave and ask myself – what the fuck was the point of this life, of all this struggle?
And the little voice, (the little accusing voice, I might add), tells me it was to do The Work ( — capitalized, note. Like it’s something).
The Work is not … like real work that can be traded for money, mind you. And to me that already points to it’s lack of value. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know how much art can be traded for. But I also get that this trade isn’t really about the art of it either.
And it’s not about doing the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, the mowing, the shovelling, the enduring, the coping, thankless task kind of work, thankless but has clear value. That’s probably why I thought why this thing I was wrestling and trying to do became capitalized in my head – to justify its importance. The Work was this compulsion of mine to express some kind of essence of an idea of what it meant to be human. I think. The hard parts of being human, the awe-inducing part of being human, the messiness of being human, the wordless part of being human.
I mean, honestly, humans have such a tendency to justify and rationalize so I couldn’t even be sure of that was what I was doing. Whatever it was, it was a compulsion, and an effort, and certainly I can categorically attest that there was a lot of work to it, and I can attest that it was honest as it could be.
This expression is your purpose, this is the the thing you had to offer, the voice whispered.
My response to that was: Well, if that’s not a lot of ego-infested, self-indulgent slop. This is the thing I have to offer a world that really has no need for it? That, I answer back, is worth nothing. No one will convince me it is. Where did that voice even come from?
Well time moved on. Bills piled up. Nothing like the demanding practicalities of life to slap you in the face and tell you to wake up. Delusional. Wake up.
And despite this, over and over again, it’s this thought that not having honoured this is what makes me feel I have squandered my life. I didn’t get it because I was in conflict over it. But it sliced at me. There has been a profound despair when I had the bravery, or maybe it was the misery, to look at it directly. So occasionally when time allowed, I tried to answer my calling, but it was half-hearted. I was not a believer. I got lost. I’m afraid it’s a trick in my head, this thing that’s calling me. A trick of the ego. A leftover of some identity formation in my youth that is evolved into the very human need to believe there is something more than this… this struggle.
Oh. How very human of me.
Perhaps, you have not understood, the voice persists. I know what that voice is doing, I declared to myself. It’s calling me a coward. I know. It’s right. I am afraid. I get it! Stop hounding me! It wants me to be more real, more direct. Take a risk. Woman up.
No. I said I got itm but I didn’t get it. I was blocked by something I was blind to.
So many years ago I remember a boyfriend asking me this, what is the point of it. I stood there like an idiot, probably with my mouth open. My father was an artist. We lived among painting, in fear of paintings, (knocking a pile of them stacked against the wall on the floor over because you had been running around like a hooligan resulting in a certain amount of shouting), I had been instructed to spend a certain amount of time going out to draw. My identity has been coiled around my talent. I got denied the opportunity to go to art camp by my father because he decided I didn’t practice enough – even when a scholarship was offered to me to go. What was the point of it? I don’t know – it just was.
I don’t think that question ever really left me. My father made his living painting the canadian landscape in work that he sold all over Canada. I was neutral about most of it. Even while I wanted to get into theatre and direct, even when I wrote, even when I designed, photographed, even when I went to film school (film was much easier to justify), even as I took art history classes which kind of maddens me now, but certainly later in life when I could not easily justifying the time of my pursuits, the question lingered. What was the point, really? If it’s not entertainment, if it’s not decorative, if it doesn’t have value except to other artists.
Apparently (apparently because I have not gone to the source on this) psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott is quotes as saying, “Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.” That makes a lot of sense to me. So there I go hiding in plain sight, doing my thing talking around the thing that I’m talking about. So is this just an exercise in self-indulgence then? Is this just a mental health wellness activity? Great. I got better things to do, Voice. (pointing finger at inner meddlesome voice)
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable,”
Banksy
But as I thought (too much) 😉 (just kidding, only you think I thought too much, I think I thought the perfect amount) …
But as I thought about this quote, it’s only now that I considered the role of audience. If an artist is driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide, how is the audience implicated in this? What is the audience’s role?
AI presented me with this: Validators of Vulnerability. You know what I thought this meant? Artists are validating your vulnerability. I like this better than the actual description I misread.
I remember some of the things that people have reached out to me about over time. A response to some things I have written, some of the things I’ve made, things that got unlocked for people perhaps. I don’t remember what they said. What was left with me was this desire to seek me out, to share something real with me. It wasn’t about my work. It was about them.
And there it is. That is what I am looking for. Had I not been paralyzed by the idea of folly, what would have told you I wanted was to move people. To move people as I have sometimes been moved. I could not, and probably still cannot articulate why. I really don’t know – I have no ah-ha feelings about it.
It’s not that art does this for all people or even should do this for people. Some enjoy playing detective, and enjoy the discussion of what it can mean. I enjoy visiting art galleries with people who think and reflect on art like this. There’s value here, I suppose, but it is just a pastime, a intellectual pursuit and and catalyst to discuss big ideas with people.
I am more interested in the personal. And so, while I don’t know what’s next in my creative journey, something became a little bit more unlocked for me. A better idea of what has been whispering to me in the dark.