Accidental Artist

"All artists have accidents, and the better the artist, the better the accident." Did I read this somewhere? Did someone actually say it? Or did I invent it as I lurched from one accident, mistake or oversight to another in the production of my Feb-March painting, "The Improbable Pond"?

My first accident was to pursue it at all, once I'd assembled the set-up. Viewed with caution, it seemed even at that stage to present some problems. But then I remembered the words of one of my esteemed role models, Mary Beth McKenzie. She and my other favorite, Harriet Shorr, are women in their 70's now, enduringly successful NYC-based artists, who in their student days bucked the art school trend in abstraction and have continued to paint in a representational manner (where things look like the things they are). I return again and again to their books and their thoughts about the process of art and about being an artist. Mary Beth writes (in A PAINTERLY APPROACH):

Growth for an artist is generally slow and unconscious. Real progress takes place over a long period of time....Unless you approach painting with a highly experimental attitude and are willing to take risks with your work, your progress will be extremely slow. It's important to continually challenge yourself, to set up problems for yourself in order to develop your technique and to experiment with new ideas. Vary your approach: try different mediums, different sized canvases, unusual points of view, more ambitious compositions. Always try to extend your reach. In this way, your work will continue to change and develop naturally. You must evolve as an artist, and this is really a lifelong process.

With her counsel in mind, I took a deep breath and leaped into "The Improbable Pond." I think I've been moderately successful in bringing it all together although the outcome is different from what I'd originally expected I would do with it. The sequence of its development is charted (can I say "by popular demand"?) at this Picasa link. Go ahead. Take the plunge.

Packrats 'R' Us

Seashells, pine cones, interesting stones, pieces of driftwood, thrift store ceramics, small family heirlooms, leaves, birds' feathers, dried flowers and seedpods, almost an entire wasp's nest (minus the central core that spontaneously combusted into live wasps in the middle of one January), mugs with broken handles, lush houseplants rejuvenated from almost dead stalks tossed out by co-workers, patterned fabric remnants, bottles and boxes with striking shapes/labels/colours, odd bits of rusted metal...just some of what makes my studio a congenial place for me to do art. (One thing I'll miss about work is those inevitable intervals of office renovations and relocations when whole boxes of promising material had to be thrown out....or redirected...to me!)

Too much stuff? Well, not for the likes of packrats, and I was encouraged to build my stash by the Pack Leader (as the cats call him), child of the Great Depression and collector of cast-off nails, pieces of lumber large and small, miscellaneous nuts and bolts, every type of electrical fixture, lengths of string, wire, cord, molded plastic packaging, odd bits of rusted metal...

What's more, packrats' passion puts me in good company. One of my heroes is Edgar Degas, particularly for his drawings that sparkle with life and movement. It was disappointing to learn of his rightwing politics and aristocratic condescension -- but very funny to read how such a fastidious man of the boulevards was also...a confirmed packrat! Here's an account given by Ambroise Vollard, one of the early dealers of various 19th century unknowns who later became known as the Impressionists: (from Bernard Denvir's PRIVATE LIVES OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS)

The most heteregenous objects were to be seen there (in Degas' studio)side by side. A bath, little wooden horses with which the artist composed his pictures of racecourses...easels, too, with canvases half-finished on them....Once an object had found its way into the studio, it never left it, nor changed its position, and gradually became covered with a layer of dust that no flick of a feather duster came to disturb. The painter would have been very astonished if he had been told that his studio was not perfectly tidy. One day I brought him a small picture that he had asked to see. As I undid the parcel a scrap of paper, no bigger than confetti, flew out and settled on a seam of the floor. Degas pounced on it. "Do take care, Vollard! You will make my studio untidy."

My own treasure trove lies somewhere between Degas' dust-covered hoard and the practical assembly of objects made by contemporary artist Janet Monafo, for whom I have some admiration. Scroll down in this link to see what she's done with her ever-expanding collection of kitchenware -- proof that packratting is quite a practical eccentricity. If our family didn't have this propensity, how would I have been able to do this 2005 painting ("Splash") that still brings a smile to my face? (When the painting was finished, I at last discarded the three pairs of aged and defective swim goggles.)