My Painting as it Hangs in the Show!

"The World is Out There" hanging in the SDMAAG show
"Contemprary Expressionism: the Creative Spirit"
Lyceum Gallery

Sold Paintings

At the Julian Arts Guild Fall Show this past weekend, I sold two paintings. I was stunned and happy. These are the sold paintings:

Descanso Falls on a December Afternoon

Rainy Evening

Persistence of Cedar

There was a guy posting on Facebook some time back (when I was "on" Facebook) who complained that there was Title 9 for women artists and that's what wrecked art and why he could never get into juried shows (I think that was his bitch)? I just now looked at the list of artists and works for the show into which my painting of the woman and the bunnies was accepted. Out of the 59 works, it looks as if there are 4 -- possibly 5 -- male artists. It's hard to tell from some of the names -- but definitely a minority. 

The percentage flips completely for artists who are famous enough to make it into Wikipedia's list of American artists. I wonder what would happen if, instead of having names or any other gender-reflecting moniker, we all had numbers, like if we used the last four digits of our social security number (which I'm thinking of doing from now on) or initials (which I could do easily since my first name isn't part of my signature). 

Another weird thing -- I recently helped hang the fall show up in Julian (Cripple Creek of So. Cal). Like last time, it was fun, even though it was 88 degrees and 100% humidity and raining. It was like working in the tropics. It's really hard to keep one's mouth shut in this situation because there is always bad art. Somehow I think bad art is objectively bad and I've painted some (I think my cows by the fence turned out to be bad art -- it looks like two painters painted it). As it's not a juried show, we have to hang whatever we have. Last time some people left 15 - 20 paintings (bad paintings) and we had to hang them. This time the woman coordinating the show said, "No more than 8 by any one artist." People got angry, but I still think that's a lot. I think it should be four. I think the show would be better with fewer and better pieces, but think god I don't make make decisions for them and never will. 

There were a couple of pieces that were just viscerally disturbing and made one want to recommend rapid mental health counseling to the painters. This time I was outspoken and said, "Don't hang that beside my table. I want to sell stuff. That's one of the most terrifying pictures I've ever seen." Fortunately, it wasn't the work of anyone there.

Then my colleague rifled through a rack of another artist's watercolors and found a painting of grapes she liked very much. I think what someone likes or doesn't like is personal taste completely and has little to do with whether something is art or not. She held it up and said, "There, Martha, that's art." I thought, "No it isn't." but I didn't say anything beyond, "It's very pretty" and it was/is.

I've been reading a book about Dada and it's interesting how each generation seems to come up with the same idea that art is going to change the world, that art is a revolution. It's cool having lived long enough to know that most people are just what the young call "going through the motions" (I no longer see it that way) and would be doing the same thing at any time or place in human history, and the young artist HAS to (a biological imperative?) see art as a revolution. Me too. It was a work of art that was the first step in my getting kicked out of college. I had the experience every romantic young artist dreams of. I installed a sculpture. Three cedar fence posts, a string of plastic flags and a For Sale sign from a real estate company (all salient information scraped off). The IDEA was this small triangle represented the last empty space on the planet. Cedar, steel and plastic don't rot (or they take a long time) meant to be a little note of irony... It was 1970. People driving by naturally thought the college was for sale. I didn't know the college was in financial trouble or anything about that; I didn't relate my sculpture to the college at all. Two things happened. 1) The college tore down the sculpture. 2) Because, when it was time to turn it in, there was nothing left of it but three holes I failed the project. 

14 years later, the college was defunct and I went to interview for a teaching job at a language school that used my dorm for offices and classrooms. I asked the janitor if I could see my room. He let me in. I opened the closet. One of the fenceposts -- the only thing I was able to recover from the sculpture -- was still in the closet. In my opinion that was a tremendously successful piece of installation art, but no one knew what it meant, that it had been there or that it persisted. In thinking about my own self as an artist I keep returning to what the one and only OKCupid date (date?), Rocky, said, "Ah yes, the persistence of the artistic impulse. You need to see 'In the Realms of the Unreal'." 

In getting a painting accepted into an Expressionist show I learned a lot. A long time ago, when I had my show in Denver, my brother said, "You're an abstract expressionist," I didn't know what he meant. In attempting to learn what expressionism IS I haven't found a clear answer, either. In the work of painting, I've pretty nearly exhausted my interest in landscapes and even in cowscapes. It's now for me a matter of finding the place where my perception of the world intersects with the world as it is. 

So, I don't know.