A Broken Portrait

I have been an artist all my life.  Creating is something I can’t stop doing.  Look around my house and you will see blankets, sweaters, t-shirts, large graphic designs and paintings everywhere.

I have been a graphic designer, digital fine artist and spent many years as a fashion designer.  And I have always felt like a complete fraud.  How could I get by on my art?  I don’t know what I am doing.  Can’t they see it’s just play?  Just fun?  Like fingerpainting when I was a kid?

I look at the masters in awe.  I look at great pop artists in awe as well.  I look at a lot of people with awe.  But I really look at the masters with a little extra awe.  The skill, the dedication, the effort, the effortlessness… It all shines through such incredible talents like Van Eyck and Da Vinci.  Rembrants floor me.  I’m the guy who goes to museums and sits on that bench and looks at the painting for a long time and then gets up and gets so close to it the guy comes up to me and says “not so close, buddy!”.  But you got to see the brush strokes.  If you can even see them…

This last year, I decided to challenge myself and start painting.  My first paintings were based on my familiarity with color.  As a graphic designer and fashion designer, I became familiar with working with color and absolutely love it!  I could never draw so I never thought I could actually become a designer, but I loved fashion so much…

Here is an example of what I could sketch at the time I wanted to be a designer:

I lucked out.  I got a job as a graphic designer at French West, Inc… They own the line Hale-Bob, and one day they needed some hands-on design help, and I got the chance to mock up some t-shirts.  And they sold.  They sold really really well.  And I got a job as an associate designer.  Since I couldn’t draw, I would dye fabrics the colors I wanted and then drape them, pin them, photograph them and work on them in photoshop until they looked roughly like a garment.  Then I would work with a pattern maker to develop the final garment.  It always started with color.  I would make the most colorful inspiration boards… Pretty, inspirational, messy collages that inspired the colorful silk soft tops and dresses I would design.

Here’s what my drapes looked like:

And if my stuff sold, well, I felt like I was a good designer.  Or at least somehow worth it.  I thought that even if the fashion industry wasn’t the best industry in the world, at least my work was feeding people and people enjoyed it.  Maybe we’re poisoning China with the fabric dye and production waste, maybe the factory conditions aren’t that great, maybe women will compulsively spend on this stuff and be lost in a consumerist cycle of gratification and craving, but temporarily at least, I was helping keep roofs over people’s heads.  And that, along with the fun it was to create clothing, was enough for me.  For a while.

I did find myself announcing that I “wasn’t really a real designer”.  And that I was kind of just winging it.  At least until my bosses told me that wasn’t cool and to keep my insecurities to myself.  Which is actually incredibly good advice.  I would watch the interns do flat sketches that looked very professional and I would just be happy with the respect they showed me as I asked them to do something technical I couldn’t do to save my life…

And, like I said, my stuff sold.  And models wore it.  And I would see it on TV.  And at shopping malls.  And in some fancy stores sometimes.  And I thought to myself, I guess I am getting my art out there a little.  Which is what I always really wanted to do.  Not so much for the appreciation, because I really shy away from being the center of attention.  But because I have a real hunger for creating and it’s for other people.  I can make tons of stuff for myself, but for some reason, that bores me.  I want YOU to have what I make.   And being a fashion designer is a great way to make sure what you make gets out there…

Before I became a designer, I was a fine artist.  But again, a fraudulent fine artist.  I was a digital fine artist.  Which means I took photos, got myself a Wacom Tablet, and used a few graphics programs like Photoshop to make interesting images.  Which I then printed out on beautiful archival photographic paper on expensive large format photo printers.  I had a gallery show.  I did the lobby of a hotel.  I had some people buy some pieces.  I hooked up with an interior designer and he got me some work here and there.

This was in the lobby of the Hollywood Hills Hotel for a few years.

And I made stuff for my family.  This piece below was in my niece’s bedroom throughout her childhood.  Now it’s in mine!

It was an interesting existence.  I knew absolutely NOTHING about the art world.  Having been entirely self-taught and really unskilled at the basics (drawing, painting, sculpture), I had no idea what I was going to do with my desire to make and show this art.  I ended up getting the attention of a wealthy Malibu figure, who became my patron.  All my art was made for him and his family, and he was going to take care of all that art-world stuff so I could live in my little treehouse in Laurel Canyon and create create create.

Well, I did create a lot of stuff.  But my patron ended up getting stoned a lot and although he did make some of the artwork into giant prints, he never met with any art people and we dissolved our relationship in about a year… And lost touch… And that was fine with me.  Having a patron might have been a dream, but honestly, I hated being beholden to anyone, and I hated having so little say in what was going on with my artwork.   Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t ego.  It was that I didn’t believe that my patron was doing anything much and that made me feel like I was creating in a vacuum.  So, if given the option of not being sure if anyone will ever see anything I make, but that’s my responsibility, and I don’t get paid unless I make it happen vs. waiting for someone else to put things together for me and they pay me $3000 a month and I can’t show my stuff to anyone,  I’ll choose the former anytime…

I stopped creating art for quite a while after that.  I did, however, create a series of posters a few years later (more on that in a different blog).  I did also seriously take up knitting as well (again, more on that in a later blog.)  But even though I focused more on other parts of life – career, friendships, relationships, I knew I wasn’t done with art.  And along with that, I knew that I had a lot to learn.

When I was 24, I wrote a book.  Well, a novella.  I never published it.  I sent part of it to one literary magazine on the west coast.  It got all the way to the main editor, but got passed on.  He wrote me a personal note that said “Onward!”  I never wrote seriously again.  I am not great with cryptic notes and I used to be really terrible with rejection.

The book is all right.  I still have it.  I look at it now and then and it’s from such a young version of me, it’s hard to judge if it’s any good.   My friends loved it at the time.  I wanted to create something that would have a profound impact on people because it would help them realize how to live life or open their minds or somehow make their lives bigger.  It was a great, benevolent wish… but I was 24 and, well…

Me, around 24

At the time, I was writing every day.  I wrote for a couple hours every day and things just flowed out of me.  I had the skill.  I had developed a voice.  I was a very confident writer.  I tried writing a book about 10 years later after not writing for that many years and wow, my writing was out of shape.  I had forgotten how to put it all together, to keep things focused and clear, and to let the magic come out on it’s own.

Last year, after yet another 10 years, a good friend suggested that I do something creative to get through a tough time (more on that later as well).  I said, “well, I can write”.  And he said, “absolutely not.  I think you should paint.” I told him I couldn’t draw or paint.  He said that it wouldn’t matter, but that I needed to create something physical, something tangible to heal.  Not to dwell in words and get worked up about concepts and ideas and it had to be something outside of myself.  Writing would be too much about me…

And Keith writes.  Keith is my fiance.  He’s an amazing writer and producer and although I will participate in the writer’s group he puts together now and then (and make the chili for the group), it’s more his thing.   I think he came up with the idea that started the ball rolling – paint by numbers!  OK, I said, I agreed to do one paint by numbers painting and see how it would go.  And I gotta tell you, paint by numbers is awesome!  I had no idea that putting those colors in those areas would ever amount to anything, but they did!

We listened to Serial.  We listened to other podcasts.  We listened to a great 2-CD set of broadway show tunes.  And we did our paint by numbers paintings.  It was great on cold, winter afternoons when it snowed.  Or on miserable, rainy days.   It took a few months, but I finished mine.  Keith had picked out a kind of basic one for me, but an advanced one for himself.  So he still had a really long way to go to finish his.  I decided to continue painting without numbers while he finished because we were having such a nice time.

My first piece was of flowers.  Just real easy.  Kinda cute.   I posted it on Facebook and got a ton of likes.  I was very surprised.  And flattered.  It was my cover photo for a while.  It made me happy.  So I continued.

And I didn’t really think much of it as I was doing it, except for that I liked painting.  And I could convey things.  I could convey emotion.  I could express feelings that people confirmed they got.  It wasn’t particularly cerebral.  It was emotional.  Things were coming out and things were coming up.

At a certain point, my father came to visit New York and we had dinner.  My father is a writer, and a professor.  He’s a critic.  I think he might be more of a critic than an enjoyer. I forgot this when I showed him some of the artwork I was working on.  He’s actually an artist himself.  I think he’s pretty good.  On one of my last visits to Oregon, several years ago, we did some artwork, and I was downright mortified at my attempt to paint… I wanted to show him that I was enjoying painting and that there had been some growth.  He said to me, “yeah, the backgrounds are, you know, interesting, but you can’t do faces, can you?”  And then he caught himself and told me he was really glad I was enjoying myself with this activity…  And I bristled that deep bristle only a critical father can bring out in you…

My Dad

Now, I love my Dad.  But he is a bad person for being so critical.  And all I heard, over and over, in my head is “you are a fraud who is not an artist and you can’t do faces.”  So, I almost quit painting.  Then Keith told me he loved my paintings.  And that the paintings were good.  Really super good and people loved them.  So I kept painting.  But I kept realizing that the faces were not very good. They were flat.  They were cartoonish.  They weren’t really very anything.

And instead of playing to my strengths and enjoying the moods I was creating, the playfulness, the flair I had, I decided to spend a month and teach myself how to do faces.  I would just make myself be able to draw and paint faces.  And shortly after that determination came, I focused my energy and my painting completely shifted.

One day I painted this:

And at least he looked like a person.  Maybe not the person I intended to paint, but a person.  And I liked him.  And so did everybody else.

So I have continued to paint.   And paint.  And paint.  Hundreds of paintings.  I feel a little like Grandma Moses.  She started late.  She loved painting.  She ended up putting her paintings up for sale in a general store for $3 or $4… and she got the attention of people.  And she ended up in museums.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art has Grandma Moses paintings in their collection!

Well, I don’t know if I will ever be in any museum, but I love the work.  Even when it gets very frustrating.  Like today.

Today I tried to paint a beautiful woman during a sunset.  And she would not cooperate.   A few weeks ago I tried to paint a man from the 1950s.  He didn’t cooperate either.  I got mad and turned him into subway art:

In New York, in the subway stations there are always half peeled posters and people mark them up in their boredom waiting for the trains.  This is my version of me doing this to my own art.  I think it turned out great.

Today, I was miserable.  I really wanted this woman to be beautiful, but she just wasn’t.  She was her own person, sort of odd and tough.  But I wanted control.  I wanted pretty.  I didn’t want substance, I wanted style.  She kept fighting me.  Her teeth were weird, her eyes were off.  And I couldn’t get her features to be balanced.

Here she is mid-way through, demanding to be strange:

I had some choices.   I could put the work down and come back to it later.  This is often the best choice.  Sometimes I come back and it’s so easy to put it all together.  Or I could keep trying and trying to make her the beautiful model I had in mind… That was not happening.  Or I could just wreck this painting and paint over it all.  And that is what I started to do.  But as I did that, it started to look really interesting to me.  Like I was looking through a broken window.  The painting stopped having to be beautiful.  So did she.  It became more about how to look at her.  How to see her.  It’s like this woman fought with me so much she broke this portrait so that she could be there…

I won’t stop working on faces.  I need to work on hands.  I need to work on bodies.  I am entirely self-taught so far, and I am very dedicated to this process.  I have no idea what will come of painting.  But I do know this: I am an artist.  I will create.  I will make things and I will somehow give them to people.  I don’t have a fantasy of how this should express itself, but I certainly am interested to see how it will progress.  I hope you follow this blog and join me…