Thursday, October 1, 2009

the mental health aspects of being an artist ...

my pal allison and i frequently talk about the business bits of art ... you know, the ______part ..... fill in the blank with hard, boring, tedious, uninspiring, unartsy, difficult ... you get the idea .... 

in our discussions we frequently end laughingly saying we'll never be too famous or too succesful since we're just soccer moms ... me literally, her figuratively (her kids didn't pick that particular demographic for extracurriculars).... we aren't young enough or old enough to be artistically unique or interesting ..... we aren't edgy or urban or rural or uneducated  or genius....... we aren't impoverished or disabled or far from our native lands.... we don't battle any profound mental health issues .... not profound ... perhaps petite .... not certain on that!! 

anyway ... we are ordinary... gloriously ordinary ..... i'm happy with ordinary .... i paint, i enjoy it, i sell enough to keep me painting happily .... i used to worry that i'd die a little old lady with a zillion paintings in my basement ... paintings that nobody wanted .... i've now sold enough to not be fretful about that anymore .... even with the recession and a definitive downturn in my selling, i'm pretty sure that i won't die a hermit painter with paintings no one has ever seen (thank you flickr!

i say all this to you as a preface to this ....my favorite artist had poverty and mental illness working in his favor ....  i am thrilled beyond compare that i got an email today from a local museum ... fernbank ..... and they sent me information about a new imax ... now, i love imax movies to begin with .... but an imax on an artist!! a favorite artist of mine!! ... here's a link to my favorite book about him .... i love irving stone ... my favorite book by him is the agony and ecstasy about michelangelo ..... but that's a whole 'nother blog bit .... here's another book that i've read dozens of times about this artist .... or this one .... it's my favorite series for kids actually .... and this i've read most recently .... it's more serious than any other books i've read on him ..... i've read a couple other fictionalized stories of this artist ... i always like them ... but will spare you more links!! 

anyway .... imax anyone? surely i won't have to go by myself! .... if you aren't here ... is there a groovy imax there, where you are?

2 comments:

artmom said...

I did not know he was your favorite! Not sure which is mine - maybe Monet? Maybe Kandinsky too?

cath c said...

oh wow! duh! of course van gogh is your favorite! color! i love him, too. minus the minus the ear bit. i took a great art history class eons ago that touch on the east's particularly japanese influence on the impressionist era, subject matter, composition, color...van gogh was a big part of that class.