Artists Statement,
a novella by Grey James.
Bert scheduled an artist's talk and it would be my first. It was miserable.
I'm not good off the cuff, I need time to think about it because I never do. I need to craft the thought and the sentences assigned it. It takes a bit. I am certain I inadvertently offended someone I didn't know and it's one of those moments you hate and have to live with.
This short excerpt from the accompanying show interview, I can hear what I'm getting at but such a terrible word salad free of structure and reason. Between I'll be dead one day and I want some delusion of control over what I leave behind, THIS:
This excerpt begins with my stating I don't like to talk about myself and my work and then I proceed to do that for 6 minutes😂. OK.
I had a 500 sq.ft. studio in Williamsburg late '80s, early '90s. It was $250/mo. (Checked Redfin. It's a condo now, same size, $755,000). I worked in the same building, fine art serigraph editions. Small business, all artists. After getting mugged a few times going from the building to my apartment - upper west side, old welfare hotel, 8'x8' room, shared kitchen/bathroom with 4 other rooms. Strangers. Also $250/mo. - I'd taken to sleeping on an old car seat in the studio three nights a week. No heat, no hot water. ART!
I got called into the figure. It was a calling. It showed up. I'm barely an artist, this did not make it better.
Is it called a Gallery Guide in LA? I'd moved to LA. I love NY, it is and always will be home. The winters, the darkness of them, got to me. I needed light, sky. Air. I ended up working for Starbucks, it didn't yet exist in NY, never heard of them. Still like their coffee. Italian Roast. Took the gamble. Made the spread sheet and it was once a week - ride my bike farthest west and work my way east, hitting up every gallery in the guide. I'd not quite exhausted the task, but around 2/3 done I could see the writing on the wall. I would think about my great American novel, My Life As A Failed Artist.
Being rejected isn't personal. It's business. I make this product, you have buyers. It's a fit or it is not. I can hem and haw and waver and try to figure all this out or I could give you slides, you look, we're done.
I have learned from this interview I am fond of hyperbole and the word "massive."
I have no idea who any artists are or what is going on in the world, all the worlds, including art. Yes, I still adore Cy Twombly and Franz Kline and Warhol (and Manet and Sargant and Basquiat and Freud) I remain in touch with the person I worked for in Williamsburg, and we had a somewhat recent conversation about the other artists we loved when we were younger that we're now like - WTF was I thinking? (...and shall remain nameless). I continue to look at art all the time, but I don't study it, memorize it. I think, That's pretty and carry on.
So sure, I do like to talk about art and making art and my history with art and paintings I love. But if you want to stand in front of a particular painting and ask me what I was thinking, there's nothing to say. Paintings call me. When I'm working on one, I will say a hundred times, No, that's not him. The painting is the process of finding him and then honoring him once I do. Our stories overlap, they don't, all of the above. I stay away from titles minus some that matter and one that got me in trouble ;); it's not my place to tell you what you are looking at.
I AM adamant about packing paintings with too much stuff, with so much ARTIST there is no room for the viewer. If I am successful in that painting what I've accomplished is just enough to invite you in, and then the space for you to be there once you are; get in there, give it just enough, get out of there. (Not to be confused with something Baroque or purposely packed.) I once said I am just some slob nobody artists, and I believe this. I am not the subject. My job is to find the moment in anything that is the shared moment in everything.
In my head when I am working and having a good moment, I tell myself - You are the world's greatest mediocre artist! I know I am not a great painter, but within my limited skillset I've managed to make it work just enough to connect an idea to a viewer in a way that has allowed me the fortunes of stepping into art, of showing, and of selling.
Thank you, Mr. Green.
And I'm sorry to that lady I offended.