I am the work

Last week, I said I was getting serious this week. I did not tell a lie. I was back in the studio inspired with purpose and somehow a new series emerged.

I think what really inspired me to get back to more serious and focused work was an essay I read as part of the Pollock module of the MOMA course. Harold Rosenberg's, "The American Action Painters" from Tradition of the New, originally in Art News in December of 1952 set me on fire! I read this article out loud to myself and was so excited by what I read, I was cheering and clapping! What a joy to discover a language that ignites, reinforces, as well as challenges, my own beliefs about modern abstract art. I ordered Rosenberg's essays the following day. It was wonderful to feel embraced by and connected to this period of art and time not only by the paintings but also by the critical thinking surrounding the work.

It reinforced again, that I know what I am doing (yes, after 20 plus years I still (at times) have my doubts) and that I am to remain on the path in order to simply further the "creation of private myths" and "...just to paint. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation, from Value—political, esthetic, moral." Doesn't that sound, great? Where do I sign up? Every day in my studio, that's where!

To paint is true liberation and that is why I have stuck with it. I feel my most free when I paint and I feel most like myself. Painting is the way I share my secrets and my truth, it's the way I see the world and it's where I create my own. The work is me and I am the work.

As I wrap up this post, I will leave you with this final Rosenberg quote. "The lone artist did not want the world to be different, he wanted his canvas to be a world. Liberation from the object meant liberation from the "nature", society and art already there. It was a movement to leave behind the self that wished to choose his future and to nullify its promissory notes to the past."