So my teacher today called my drawing "conservative." Now, I am very aware that this could've been applied and could be interperted in many ways, but for some reason when people call my drawings/photographs "conservative" it just really irks me. It's not that I consider myself really even "liberal" or "conservative" in a political sense-- but when someone applies label that to something of artistic merit, I somehow consider it to mean "conserative=safe" and "safe=dead." The assignment was to do something with your signature, fill the page with your signature, do as many things as you possibly can with your signature. When I start a drawing, I might have some kind of idea of where I might want to end up, but usually I'll catch on to some rhythm or pulse and try to ride that as long as I can; try to feel it out and not necesarrily concentrate on "me." Now obviously, what comes from your hands is a direct line to you, but whenever I feel like I have to conciously create something that represents "me" and who I am, the more self-concious I have to be about it, the less fun and more forced and well, just sucky the end result becomes. You're you, and whatever you do, is by some way an expression of you... but you must not think of it that way! The purest output is the most honest and direct; how the hell does someone go out and write/draw/film something with the analysis and essays already written out crossing every t and dotting every i and have every meaning already packaged in neat tupperware?
It's something I've been struggling with a while, as I hate phoniness pretty much as a life guideline. The phonier it is, the more artificial and fake it is, the worst it is. I want everything and anything I do to be as honest as I can, and so sometimes, when I'm on a drawing, and I'm getting really into it, I want to abandon as much as myself as I can and let whatever flows and the rhythm take full hold. So, when you get to a breaking point, and look back, or when the teacher comes around with his comments, what happens if it becomes something else you haven't necesarrily intended it to be or really be a representation?
Well, I don't think its really possible, or well, I'm not sure if it's possible to able to manifest yourself completely and wholly in a single drawing, film, whatever. I think I believe in representing complex ideas and abstractions and, hell, whatever you want through a work, but people, and much more your self-perception, I think are so much more unbelievably complex and brimming with trillions upon trillions different shades and emotions and traits, that sometimes I think the best pieces of art can't approach. But, it tries, and the closer it gets to reaching that, arguably the most beautiful and wonderful the work becomes. But can it ever compete with life itself?
Oh boy, that was quite a rambling. But see, okay, in that signature assignment I was talking about, I wrote my signature on the back of some receipt, and then on my paper, blew it up so it was unrecognizable with thick black lines stretching beyond the paper...and from that I started working small bits around those huge lines...so forth... and the teacher told me to be rawer, more loose in my decisions, and "run wild." Well, okay, yeah, there's a great visceral feel in doing that but for what my drawing started to become, it didn't work. It wasn't working. So I tinkered around with it for another hour, and in following the teach's comments, I walked out of class disatisfied. And so, the hidden implication of the assignment, was that through your signature, you would reveal yourself and show "who you are" on paper for all to see. Argh. Urgh.
Maybe I shouldn't view what I do so analytically, let things come naturally, or, crash into the other extreme, go for broke and try all I can to reach beyond I beileve I can do using everything I got. Maybe a little bit of both?