Food cooked with love, paintings by Chad Etting (New Hampshire), going for a walk, songs by Michael Hurley and Arthur Russell (all over those American states), cedar-shaked homes of New England, craft, and naturalism.
Much of what I've enjoyed over the past years can be described forthrightly as integrally honest. I believe that Honesty and candor in artistic expression create the ultimate understanding.Early in my journey, before starting the art school days, artistic philosophy from James Baldwin was passed down to me by Rory A. P. Ferreira (then, Milo). Baldwin's writings and lectures on the creative process, the moral responsibility of the artist, and the artist's struggle for integrity were necessary for my development as a "creative" person at a time when I started asking the why.In R.A.P. Ferreira's track "Cycles", he reads an excerpt from Susan Sontag's essay "The Pornographic Imagination":"If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature—the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society—it is because one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artist as a person) and reporting back what's there. Being a freelance explorer of spiritual dangers, the artist gains a certain license to behave differently from other people; matching the singularity of his vocation, he may be decked out with a suitably eccentric lifestyle, or he may not. His job is inventing trophies of his experiences— objects and gestures that fascinate and enthrall, not merely (as prescribed by older notions of the artist) edify or entertain."Digested outside of its context, an essay discussing the morality and artistry of pornography, wherein this is noted as an oversimplification, I found this to be a compelling answer to the why which enables the artistic license and the true duty of the artist. "A freelance explorer of spiritual dangers inventing trophies of experiences"; this was perfect to me.Baldwin describes the duty of the artist in his 1962 essay "The Creative Process" as "reveal[ing] all that he can possibly discover concerning the mystery of the human being". He also describes it as "bearing witness helplessly to something which everybody knows and nobody wants to face". In his talk from the same year, The Artist's Struggle for Integrity, once again introduced to me by Ferreira, Baldwin proclaims "It seems to me that the artist's struggle for his integrity is a kind of metaphor; must be considered as a metaphor for the struggle, which is universal and daily of all human beings on the face of this terrifying globe, to get to become human beings. It is not your fault, it is not my fault, that I write. I would never come before you in the position of a complainant for doing something that I must do"."The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself" - E.E. Cummings.Exposed to shavings of Theravada Buddhism from a young age, I'd heard of the Four Noble Truths— acknowledging life's inevitable dissatisfactions as a result of general impermanence; an early glimpse, for a young me, into a world where spiritual dangers are present and applicable to us all. To be human beings is to struggle from dukkha, samudaya, nirodha, an exhaustive list of inevitable vices, evils, and cravings which deter human peace. The artist and the Buddhist monk share the same spiritual duty— giving up oneself and the conventional way of life as an offering in the pursuit of understanding everyone else; sacrificial and radical empathy. The monk relinquishes possessions, romance, currency, luxury, even food; relinquishing their singularity and embracing an enlightened human state, helping others to do the same. Far from what could be described as philanthropic vocations, true artists, poets, permaculturists, monks reject the conventional with reckless abandon and trawl the far reaches of human experience, digesting it and reflecting it back towards us. The literature lines up.Each Chad Etting painting of a simplistic dog, or house, or tagline like "Enjoying a Sprite on Nantucket" is a subtle, honest reassurance of these secular truths. Etting has hundreds or thousands of paintings of nouns familiar to the typical New Englander— sailboats, colonial homes, L.L. Bean catalogue images, place names like Cape Cod, Boston, or New Hampshire. Each of these is a simple and empathetic reminder that there is, at least, one other person on this earth who knows these things are real— has had a similar experience to you in life, has seen the same things you have, or has the capacity to understand the same truths as you. Seeing the name of a place you love painted cutely on an otherwise blank canvas becomes a prompt to swing open the door of interpretation.
A work of Etting's I purchased during a studio sale in 2022, with the words "Cape Cod" in blue paint on a page of yellow construction paper.Norman Rockwell captured his time through images of American daily life; anyone at that time could relate to at least one of his paintings, which is enough to say that his artwork contained an empathetic seed. He had to become his eyes so you could become your heart. Rothko paintings are beautiful; what you see is what you get; their apparent simplicity lends itself to be interpreted nearly freely by the viewer. That extreme level of apparent candor allows the viewer to self-see in many more ways than Rothko could have imagined.Devoted to his craft, the beautiful simplicity of LUCY (Cooper B. Handy, Massachusetts) in songs like "1 Thing", which repeats the question "if it is about one thing, what is that one thing?" is easy to attach oneself to. As described by himself in an online bio, "It is hard to know Lucy's music without feeling you know it and him well; it hardly takes one song to have at least some understanding of him and what he represents. This can only be partly credited to his unique production and word-smithing-lyrics that spin the sense out of common sense...". The beauty is that, from its roots in hyper-contemporary common sense, his music is representing us and the feeling of knowing him well is actually him knowing us well. Speaking with him a few times, I'm not sure this is something he'd admit. I will take a leap and say that he might not be entirely conscious of this effect or at least it's something he'd be coy about acknowledging.Songs of Arthur Russell's like "Eli" are very Norman Rockwell to me; recounting a relationship with a dog, or perhaps with himself, over his droning cello, feels distinctly grass-roots American. Very "boy and his dog" but in a realistic way, which can be even more romantic. "Just Regular People" is as direct as it gets— Russell is telling us that he's just like us, we're just like him, and we're all like each other. "Iowa Dream", the title track from the album of the same name, is an almost comedic caricature of a stereotypical, idealized, Midwest American agricultural town, but Russell sidesteps that interpretation through his earnestness. Maybe it's because he is really from this town in Iowa, but I feel like he knows that we can picture exactly what he's singing about while he's crowing like a rooster or barking like a dog. The lyrics are so potently visualizable despite their vagueness, probably to the majority of his American listeners.It takes a real master of Americana like Michael Hurley to move to every corner of the country and be heralded in their local folk scene. Pop music is the easiest way to make art that people can relate to; good pop music feels like a warm hug.It's not possible to understand all human truths, which is why there is a beautiful variety in artists. The artists that create work most relatable to me have lived similar experiences to me, or who can, at the very least, share an understanding of what that experience is like. Billions of people require billions of works of art from billions of artists. An idea is a work of art. I told a friend one time that the best work of art would be, in some little way, relatable to every person who viewed it. I don't think that's necessarily true; I think that if an artwork can be a bridge of honest understanding between the artist and one viewer, the art is a success. None of this aims to discuss aesthetic value or relevance, by the way; that's a whole nother ballgame. An idea is a work of art.I love seeing signs that people have written by hand as works of art. No parking, fresh paint, wet paint, no junk mail please, be back in 30 minutes; these are so human and universal to all of us.
There is so much art to love out there, and it's good to love and be loved by art. I just wanted to get these thoughts I've been thinking for a while out to run around and play for a while. Ramblings as they are!Peace and love. I'd love to hear what you are growing in your garden.
