Reading harold_maude's journal

...I'll stand in the wings and wait. That is something that I've been feeling this morning alot.
Playing spider solitare and trying to win at least one game.
A wake up ritual to get my brain functioning.

Last night I actually got to work for a while in peace. Which was something that was wonderful. Something I haven't
had in so long.
The need to do art and then having any time inturpeted by constant requests for this or that has made the time
I do get very limited.
There was a time when I could do art with people around. I let their energy tap into the flow of the work and show
me what the end result was.
And it was good for a while, but as the months progressed it got harder and harder to work.
People constantly wanting to talk.

So now it's all battered and broken. And I'm wanting a quiet space to work in, to get back to the privacy of working
with no one but the sounds of dead composers telling me their stories through their music.
I dance with them while their music wraps around me and infuses me with their life.
The majority of my teachers have been dead people, their work. They made this statement and hundreds of years,
or years later here I am listening and learning from them.
Wandering through their place in the fields of what they knew of the creative fire that exists.

One of the important lessons that I have walked away with is that creativity can not be taught, the only thing that
can truely be taught about when it comes to art is what the tools are and what is possible to do with thoes tools.
Unfortunately so many people out there don't understand that they have this creativity inside them already,
they are terrified of this unknown and believe that they can't be creative, and so they look to someone to tell them what
to do.

A good teacher is simply a guide. That's all. A teacher is not a parent who is waiting for people in the form of clay to
reproduce themselves and so insure their immortality.
The people who have ended up in front of me asking me to teach them are told that all I can do is show them the tools
and what's possible with thoes tools, and the rest, finding their own voice is up to them.
It's always my hope when this happens that some brilliant spark will catch their eyes with in their own soul and they
will pass me by with works of power and beauty.

If that is accomplished then I've been a good guide.
I do what I do. It's my path and job on that path to keep exploring, pushing what I know further and further and hopefully
find lots of brilliant sparks that catch my eye.
The only thing I could ever want to reproduce is children from my flesh and I did that.
I don't want students who paint just like me or draw just like me. That's an insult to both me and them.
That negates both what I do and what they are capable of.

I say let them take what I've laid out there in front of them and go as far as they can with it. And I hope they suceed, and are
set free into this powerful place of creativity, and who knows, maybe years down the road or sooner I will be seeing their work
gracing the covers of magazines or on tour around the country.
That is an awesome possiblity, because it means that the doors have been opened and they are free.
Yea for freedom!

Someone else's sucess will never stop mine. I have my own voice and there are so many people in the world there is enough room
for all the voices being spoken in the language of art.

I'm not against art schools, but what I am completely against are thoes artists who are standing in the role of teacher who
are so insecrure about their own voice that they see their students as potential rivials, so they teach the studen to be a copy of themselves
but never give them the confidence to find their own voice.
Many students have dropped out of art school because they keep running into these kinds of teachers.

Each of us are only passing this way, we are not the stone monuments that stand in front of great halls or even the halls themselves.
We are only passing through. And we have to understand that the torch was passed to us only for a little while, and the responsiblity
of getting the torch passed to us comes with the understanding that we have to pass it on at some point.

The part of the world I was born into is full of artists who don't trust each other, simply because of the accepted types of art that
sell and are promoted there.
It is only a tiny fraction of the art world that is accepted there. Charles Russel, Thomas Kinkade, Norman Rockwell, Bev Doolittle
and the works of many famous and very dead artists, many of whom spent their lives living in poverty because they were trying to
make a living off of the one thing they loved more than any other.

The rest of the art community that exists in that place are in fierce compititon for the remaining money that is dangled like an impossible
to reach carrot in front of them so they become bitter rivals against each other.
Instead of it drawing them together to give each other the support and encouragement that artists need from each other, they view each
other as the enemy of the almightly dollar.
It's a sad thing to watch, and an even sadder thing to be around.

What ends up happening is that many of the wonderful artists who could be the leaders in a huge art explosion in the area end up
leaving for greener and more lucritive pastures. Cities known for being art centers of the world. And when they become
sucessful their art finds it's way back to that area and the people who buy it see only that the artist is from this city or that.
They don't realize that the artist who's work they are buying is the same artist they wouldn't give the time of day to while
the artist was right in their mist to begin with.

While I was still living there I heard this story about a couple who had an open house for a painting they had bought in another
city.
They bought it because they believed they had the work of a very talented artist who must have been from that other city.
All the people who came to see the work oohed and ahhhed over the work.
Things were going swimmingly and this couple was so proud and even arrogant over what they had...
then a funny thing happened.
One of their neighbors who was at this big deal said to them, "I know this artist, they used to live right down the street."

The couple was instantly horrified to learn that they had actually bought something from a local artist who had just
left because of the attitudes that persist about the local artists.
They were embarressed and humliated.

When I heard this story it reverberated what I knew and had run into so many times when trying to get into the galleries
in that town.
I thought, how sad.
The artist was an awesome artist. It shouldn't have taken them moving away to have their work appreciated, and then when
it was discovered where they were from, the attitude about the work changing from being wonderful to being somthing of
shame.

Since I've moved away I've had two one woman shows. Both of them I had in a state of major reluctance, due to my past experiences
from the town where I grew up in.
I was shocked to discover the response of people here. They were blown away and lots of work sold.
Since the last one I've had lots of people pestering me about doing another one. Waiting for my next show. I have a feeling that
if someone from the town where I grew up came and bought a peice of work, thinking about it like what thoes other people thought,
that the same thing would end up happening.

Because of the way things have gone here in my personal life, I'm getting ready to move on. To another city, one with a bigger art
communtiy than there is here. More acceptance of different kinds of art. A place where the people living there both support
their local artists and just simply love art.
That's what defines a real art center. The artists are accepted and encouraged because the people there just love art.
That's the kind of place that seems more like home.
A place where artists arn't fighting each other for something that that other people in other walks of life fight less over.

When I get there I'll find out if the stories I've heard are true or not. And I'll find out if the artists there are supportive of each
other and encourage each other and are glad when someone's work sells, even if it's not their own.
That's a place I want to be a part of.
Yes, I get thrilled when someone else's work sells. It means that art is getting out there. And the creative fire that burns in all of us
is still being heard, and it means that the push from the machine that desires that we all becomming lemmings is still being
fought against, and each time a peice is sold that machinery is being denied and told no.
That's why I am happy every time a peice of work that goes outside the box of what the machinery says is the frame work of "True art"
gets sold, and that artist makes it big.
Yea for freedom!

Every artist who stands against the winds of the status quo is my hero. More power to them. Keep up the good fight, keep speaking
the language of art the way your heart and spirit and soul are desined to.
It helps the rest of us who struggle and fight the same fight from the trenches. It give us the courage to keep going and not
conform and not give in, and not compromise our own visions.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.