Portal (And Some Stuff About Landscapes)

"Don’t try to paint good landscapes. Try to paint canvases that will show how interesting landscape looks to you – your pleasure in the thing. Wit." Robert Henri

"Anything that allows the audience access to how you see the world is accurate-even if the information is wrong." Rick Rubin

I painted this last week.

Portal, 2024

It's based on a picture I took in Utah last fall.

Obviously, some decisions were made. Some were conscious (cutting down on the greenery at the foot of the hill, making the clouds absurd, heightening the color). Some were unconscious-at a certain point, I stop looking at the reference and just do things that I think are interesting-inadvertent marks that I like wind up staying in the picture.

The two quotes above are relevant to the process. If I were able to faithfully reproduce what is shown in the photograph, the feeling of the place wouldn't really be captured. These rocks were huge (do you see the building at the base of the rocks? I didn't until I started painting). The combined effect of the land around me, the rocks and the clouds was to make me feel very small. The painting choices I made were intended much more to convey that feeling than the actual shape or color of the rocks.

I'm part of an artist's group where you can bring a painting to the monthly meetings. Everyone in attendance votes on them and the top four get displayed around town.

This one didn't get chosen.

Which I took way too personally.

But over the next few days, a few people who I really respected reached out and told me how much they loved what I had done. With that feedback and a few days of thought, I've tried to crystallize some things I've learned from other places, but am still trying to internalize:

1. Your art has to please you before it pleases anyone else.

2. You are not for everyone. Someone who everyone tolerates is probably kind of boring. Even the best people in the world have haters.

3. There's enough people in the world that, if you make the art you want to make, someone else will like it too.
   

So, this week, I'm going to try to remember my pleasure in the thing, whatever that might be.

I asked AI to make the Rick Rubin quote funny and here's the hilarious thing it came up with (10,000 eye rolls-AI sucks): According to the wise words of Rick Rubin, even if the facts are as scrambled as a mixed-up jigsaw puzzle, as long as it gives people a peek into your wacky worldview, it's still considered spot-on!