[Ink and paint pen on reclaimed cardboard with digital embellishments and color.]
Art isn't a MEANS to something else for me---to money or fame or high society---maybe (in a small way) it's a bid towards immortality, but only in a secondary sense---as a possibility for AFTER my physical body runs out of gas and we can't get the old rust bucket started again. For the HERE AND NOW, it's the GOAL---the END IN ITSELF.
I love making images and telling stories and playing music and viewing other people's work and sharing tips, techniques, experiments, failures, and BOOKS for people to devour. I have art on my walls (my own and lots of other folks---our house is like a mini-gallery space) and art in books and in boxes and in binders... I listen to music when I sleep and drive and do art and when I watch my granddaughter... I send art cards and funny stories and poems to my friends. I write and draw every day, and I try to SHARE something (at LEAST on HIVE, even if nowhere else) every day as well...
My whole existence is ART---not galleries or openings or auctions, just ART.
Why??? What's the point or purpose? Why do I obsess over such an unimportant, less-than-useful scam? My answer...
ART is the WHY. ARTISTIC CREATIONS AND INDIVIDUAL SELF EXPRESSION are the parts of society, of culture, of humanity that comes from US, as individual humans (or aliens or ghosts or monsters or A.I. or...) Art isn't really about PERFECTION or the GREAT WORK or POTENTIAL SALES... It's about ME. It's ME MAKING ME. It's ME GIVING MYSELF TO YOU. If that's too weird or hippie or metaphysical for you, that's fine. For YOU, it can just be a funny picture of a snake or bunny or ghost or U.F.O. That's a fair way to look at it.
But ANOTHER way to look at it is that all of these posts I write, all the drawings and photographs and poems snd reviews and playlists...they're all threads in the tapestry that IS culture and society and family and LIFE. They aren't separated from it, the creative works of ALL of the folks online, and writing in journals, and sending letters, and doing stand-up in a coffee shop (it will happen again, someday), crafting poems, drawing a dinosaur with a crayon, dancing in front of mirrors, singing in the shower... It's all art. The ART OF EVERYDAY, and there's no reason that we shouldn't RECOGNIZE these little gestures as ART, as VITAL ELEMENTS OF OUR LIVES, and cherish them for the valuable pieces of our culture that they truly are...
Consider this, some of the EARLIEST evidence we have of humans being human is ART! Cave paintings, pottery, carved figurines...and even though the NAMES of the artists who made these works are lost (many of the earliest cave paintings PREDATE writing!!!), yet nobody would say these works are NOT art.
No auctions, no openings, no press (that survives---they might have had primitive fliers drawn on papyrus paper that they handed out to lure people to the caves...we don't know), just ART. And it's cool, just like TODAY'S art is cool and should be appreciated as much as that old stuff is! It's all individuals expressing themselves. It's all art...
Early versions of the image at the top:
Here's another piece I drew today:
"Untitled (24 June 2020)"
[Gel pen on paper with digital embellishments and color.]
Early versions:
And one last piece:
"Untitle (Transparent PNG)"
[Digital drawing created on my phone.]
Okay, thanks for stopping by! Leave a comment if you want to argue about what is and isn't art! I'm prepared to debate my point until I can't fights no more...or until someone convinces me that my position is inaccurate with a well reasoned argument...
Later!
---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Holy Fool)
[P.S. - This post was originally published last night at bedtime on my HIVE blog. I have given myself permission to repost it here for you peeps...]
SUPPORT INDEPENDENT FOLKS WHO ARE JUST MAKING STUFF BECAUSE THEY LOVE IT!!!
https://peakd.com/@richardfyates
https://noncom.art.blog/reviews-books-movies-music/
https://makersplace.com/store/richardyates/
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com/
#art #digitalart #drawings #humor #philosophy #philosophyofart #trashart #trashforlife #lowcostrevolution
