harold_maude's journal

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This post was edited by harold_maude on Nov 06, 2005.

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This post was edited by harold_maude on Nov 06, 2005.

Text deleted. I think it's time for a burn.

This post was edited by harold_maude on Nov 06, 2005.

Sitting here thinking about things. Wondering how long it's going to take..how much more time. I'm moving at least, forward tords this goal.
At least that much is happening.

The last couple of days have been different. I find it hard to get up in the morning.
I know this came about because there is some big stuff comming that requires more money, so I understand that.

But I've waited so long that now, so close and still off in the distance. I feel like I've been pregnant with this forever.
I just want to get on with this.
Do the one thing I know I'm suppose to.

Sometimes it feels like this illusion just sitting there staring at me from a rippled mirror and asking me these questions over and over, without waiting for an answer.

some times it feels like I've lost so much time that when it finally does happen I'll be on my death bed and will only be able to watch helplessly, no longer able to create more, and all the while my mind exploding with vision after vision of the most intese work and not being able to focus my body anymore to try to speak about what I'm seeing.

I wish I had been strong enough years ago to leave my home town and follow this path then.
I know there are is a thought that at least I made it at some point in my life.
I wonder if I could have handled being away then, like I do now.
No homesickness...none.

I wanted to go to the cincinatti instute of art when I was in highschool.
Everyone got their own studio, and that would mean I could really study to my hearts content.
I did anyway, on my own. My instructors were all kinds of things and artists who were dead.
I remember taking adds from magazines and imitating them trying to get as close to perfect as possible.
I learned life drawing from playboy.
I learned how color works from spending hours just looking at nature.
..I wanted to go to school to study art. I was just as hungry to do art as I am now.
I'm fighting time now...
I didn't understand what I do now about art being a primitive language, one that connects the whole human race.
I didn't understand the difference between being an awesome technition and being an artist.
One takes only the understanding of certian rules and following them, while the other is fluid and moves and breathes.

I threw out the rules of art along the way. I just did what ever led me to where ever.
It was a place to hide out in from the world...
I was isolated.

I wonder what I would be like now if I had gone to school so far away from the place where I lived my life up to just a few years ago.
Would I have learned the same things anyway?

I don't know...I do know that I see art in a way now that is different from almost all the artists I talk to, especially the ones who have been to school.
It makes me feel like a freak sometimes. I think about things differently.
And I find myself wanting to hang out with other artists and see what we have in common.
and it makes me wish that I could go back in time and hang out with van gogh or lenardo, and learn as much as I could.

And Esher...and some others as well.

I've got to just stay focused and keep my thoughts going in a focused direction instead of thinking about something I can't change.

I'll be more settled once I'm there...

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This post was edited by harold_maude on Nov 06, 2005.

Somthing happened last night. And with all of these kinds of things, when it happens it's equivialant is waking up and smelling the coffee as it were.

Here's what I found out.

I know in my bones that I am an aritst. Not just a great technition.
But an aritst. The real deal.
Art is what I know. It flows in my veins from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.
It is my job on this planet to create art.
Period. To do anything else is just clocking time, no matter how hard I work, or how much above and beyond what is requested of me by an employer, it's still just clocking time.

It does not matter to me if no one around me belives that I can live by my art.
It does not concern me that so many people have told me that
it's not possible for me.
Other people, who are just like me, yes it's possible for them,
but not for me.
I don't have to believe what they think.

I am an artist. I know it in my bones.
It's part of what was brought together from the universe when
I was formed.
It's what makes it possible for the work I do to do the things that it does.

I know I am an artist. Just one of many that exist on this planet.
And as artists we are called to speak the primal language of the human race.
We speak of what we see and what the world and it's inhabbitants tell us.
We do this for ourselves and for each other.

It's easy to say I'm an artist. It has been easy to say for a very long time. But to believe it, what it means and to finally come to terms that being an artist has ment that every other job I've had was destine to fail.
Simply because I'm not doing my job on this planet.
To believe that and to know it means that my road is clear.
And if I keep putzing around doing other things, I'm doing the wrong thing.
I don't give a shit if thoes other things bring in tons of money or not.
And I don't give a shit if everyone I'm working with sees me as a valuable member of the work staff, and that includes the person I'm working for.
I'm still not doing what I'm suppose to be doing.
It means that no matter how hard I work, or how much I learn, or if I have an exemplry attendance record, I'm still doing the wrong thing and thoes jobs will end.
Some quicker than others.

The only job that is going to be with me for the rest of my life is doing art.
It is my lifes work.
Period.

With that in mind, I have come to the realization that my road is going to be harder, simply due to the fact that the world is overloaded with people doing art.
Doing art that is trendy, doing art that is way out in either left or right field.
Doing art that is great technically, and art that is designed to make people want it, because it's based more on feeding the currant tastes of the buying public than anything else.
That kind of art fades away with time. It becomes a footnote in history, and it becomes the kind of art that goes out of fashion and ends up in someone's attic, or at a yard sale or in a thrift shop gathering dust.

I've done that very thing. Found out what people wanted and did it so that they would buy it.
It was nothing more than giving them what they wanted. And the worst part was it did nothing but feed my ego, and gave me one hell of a big head about what I was doing.
I needed and got several good swift kicks in the ass of my soul to remind me that it's not very honest to do that.
I am greatful that the path I was going on was stopped.

It happens all the time. And from one perspective it's a way to make your art sucessful.
Andy Worhol did it. Marilyn Manson has done it. Thomas Kincade has done it.
It feeds the buying public what they want.
Speaking of Tomas Kincade, I saw that he has taken his art and turned it into paint by numbers now. Both in colored pencil and oil colors.
He's a great business man who happens to know how to paint something really well.
And he has taken this knowledge and turned it into a very huge business.
But it has gone to his head. I read an article in which he said of himself that he was the greatest painter in the world.
Now that is pretty arrogant.

I have come to believe that if I just take a step through the open door, then the work will do what it is designed and ment to do.
If I don't do it, then I will loose the ablity to.
And that would be torture. A life of misery.
I don't want to live my life full of regret that I missed it because I listened and followed the bad advise of people who don't believe that I'm capable of making a living doing my job.