The Weight of Secrets, Fighting to Succeed...
I think the job of the artist is to make the experience of mystery palpably vivid in a way that does not resolve the mystery but, instead reveals the mystery as more profoundly mysterious than we realized.
I think of the way that James Victore alters and modifies his brushes and paint pens to make them less predictable, less precise, less controllable.
Or, the way that George Condo draws; seemingly random, almost erratic, and often more concerned "with the diagonal motion of the drawing, caring more about "where it goes on the paper, without much concern about "what it is".
Or maybe even the way that Aaron Draplin's favorite pass time is "junking", scouring thrift stores and estate sales looking for bits of old design, logos, and type, searching within them for the forgotten stories and hidden tales that will spark his imagination and catalyze his creative process.
The purposeful imprecision, the uncontrollable brush strokes, the unpredictable discoveries, in each case, the artists delve deeply into a "mysterious" pursuit, searching for secrets.
Maybe I'm grasping at straws but, there seems to be parallel between the pursuit of mystery and what Austin Kleon calls "dumpster diving".
Kleon writes that
Dumpster Diving is one of the jobs of the artist - finding treasure in other people's trash, sifting through the debris of our culture, paying attention to the stuff that everyone else is ignoring, and taking inspiration from the stuff that people have tossed aside for whatever reason.
These are the things that draw me into all of my creative endeavors, whether in writing, collage, digital art, or even in my recent forays into more analog mediums and projects. In "sifting through the debris" of old magazines and newspapers, finding inspiration in "tossed aside" books, moving paint and pen with a seemingly unsteady hand, I am searching to revel in something unknown. I am forced to give up control, to exercise awareness, welcoming the imperfect and the imprecise. Searching for treasure without a name, guided by a map that can't be written, I can't foresee what I'll find, what images will spark something, what words or phrases will whisper secrets, and what mysteries will come to light as the pieces are put together, shifted, and rearranged. I am simply doing the work of finding "the work".
We are full of secrets. We contain a multitude of mysteries. We are breathing inkblots, walking Rorschach tests. Perhaps, its in experiencing the weight of our own untold secrets that we are driven to create and compelled to keep creating.
Maybe art, itself, is an external attempt to touch our deepest secrets, the secrets buried so deeply that we don't even know that they're there. And maybe, these are the secrets fighting the hardest to be unearthed.
The stray hairs of lacerated bristles, the hidden treasures of another person's trash, the gems found amidst the junk, the stories pieced together with paper and glue, all bear the weight of our secrets, fighting to succeed to the surface of awareness...