Sight

Nearly over a year and half ago, I had a brief dalliance with a man. This man called himself an artist and I found that intriguing. And dumb. I have a very strict no messing about with artist’s rule, but I humoured him nonetheless. Very quickly, it became clear that this man was not an artist, but simply a bum who used the title of artist to justify nearly a decade of unemployment and appalling social behaviour. Mind you, he did create things, middling videos he’d post on social media of various women he’d court and record without—I soon found—their permission or knowledge. This experience, though minute, had a profound impact on me. At the time, I was working like a dog on the finishing touches of a performance piece I was soon to publicly show. When not at my part-time job, I was rehearsing, sewing, and being a producer to the point of total exhaustion.It was fantastic, and even through all this work, I still could not come close to calling myself an artist. Simultaneously, during my free seconds, I watched this man be extremely lazy and proudly proclaim that having a 9 to 5 does not an artist make, as he drank his tenth Dark and Stormy. I wondered want the hell I was doing wrong.

           For as long as I can remember, I have always worked a ‘survival job.’ For a very long time that’s all I did, putting my creative self to the side in the hopes of squashing it completely. I just couldn’t see how I was going to create, pay my bills and maintain my parent’s approval.So, I plowed through, slogging my way up the so-called ladder to the position I’d been working toward since I stepped foot on the first rung. Then the pandemic happened. Everything stopped and for the first time I was faced with myself,totally alone without pressure from anyone. With some money saved and unemployment granted for the grounded travelling salesman I’d become, I could do whatever the fuck I wanted. I chose to write, and began the long, arduous, consistent process of self-actualisation.

To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perceptions.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Robert Irwin

           This September marks the six-year anniversary of my being introduced to the visual artist Robert Irwin. seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees changed my perception of artistry much the same way the above quote has redefined being an artist. It reinforced the importance of working incredibly hard and accepting that realising your endeavours requires you to be a bit of an asshole on occasion. In these six years my consciousness has gradually awakened to understanding what being that kind of asshole is, and it’s not been owing to the work I’ve created, rather to how I’ve become more conscious of my surroundings, the people I encounter, the places I see and how I interact with it all. The simplicity of existence is to stand solitary in a crowd yet feel intrinsically connected to all that’s aroundyou. This realisation allows for honest creativity, and though you may not bean entirely likeable person during the creative process, you are doing the work.

To give a body and a perfect form to your thought---this alone is what it is to be an artist.

                                                                                                        Jacques-Louis David

            Thoughts and ideas run through my mind every day. I wonder what it feels like to give birth, to survive without a limb, to be shot. Physical sensations that are foreign to me, yet a part of the human experience. I cannot replicate these actions en vivo per se, but I have strong feelings that arise within me when I watch someone experience them. I cry. I laugh. I rejoice. Then,overwhelmed with a tremendous sense of affinity, I put pen to paper.  What I think David is saying is that it’s work;It’s work to leave yourself open. To be receptive and to honour those feelings.Then before a blank slate you work tirelessly ad infinitum to simply evoke a universal human episode. Sometimes you’re successful sometimes you’re not, but always you know that you have slaved in the effort to be truly honest not to yourself but for your audience. I’m no artist, though everyday I’m learning to makes omething worthwhile and finding it’s not about me.

           Six years on, and I feel like I’m still at the beginning. That I opened Lawrence Wechsler’s book yesterday and still don’t know a thing about life. Yet, I’m getting there: I can look at images of Robert Irwin’s Untitled (dawn to dusk) and decipher every gradient of light exposed as being symbolic of a journey. From light to grey to dark, through multiple doorways, we walk to discover our true selves. For the first time in my life I can see, forget, and feel wholly.

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Image: Artdependence Magazine; Robert Irwin, untitled (dawn to dusk), 2016. Permanent collection, The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas. Photo by Alex Marks, courtesy of The Chinati Foundation © 2023 Robert Irwin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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