From Puzzled to Inspired

From Puzzled to Inspired

Last Friday, my first solo show opened at ARTshare 25 in San Mateo.





Here I am at the reception, explaining the materials and concepts of my piece, Talked Around.

I am certainly proud and honored to be featured and it's exciting to see a collection of my work up in one place. Several folks came by for the reception, and I have even received some media coverage.

I introduced myself to each guest and made myself available if they had questions. Some fellow artsits also attended and we discussed mine and other artwork as well.

I had reactions that ranged from puzzled to inspired , and frankly, I enjoyed them all.

One young women felt strongly about my piece, September Self Portrait. She was open with her reactions and I was amazed to hear her essentially reciting the emotions I was feeling at the time that I painted the piece. She said the piece looked sad, but not entirely, and that she felt the face staring at her, challenging her to face herself and figure out what she was about.

Another guest, an older European woman, was not as enthusiastic, but she was engaged and curious. She said she owned a lot of traditional art, but was not familiar with abstract art. She asked a lot of questions and said she found the work puzzling. I'm not sure she really enjoyed it or liked it, but we had an interesting conversation about the different pieces. In fact, when we discussed Talked Around, I explained how it was Holocaust-inpired and reflected denial and suppression. She quite quickly understood the piece, and said she had personal experience with it. When she left, she thanked me and said she had learned some things.

When I rejoined some of my artist colleagues, I commented that this guest was a bit puzzled and someone said, "But that's what you're going for, right?"

I was stumped. It may have even been the next day when I thought quite definitively, "No, not really." I just paint what comes to me. My pieces are expressions of my emotions and observations. But I'm not purposely trying to confuse anyone.

It can be challenging for me when people are puzzled by my work. It often seems that they don't particularly care for it, which is fine, but it's naturally harder to take in stride or to figure out how to have a dialogue, than with someone who is enthusiastic and enjoying it.

A couple days later I was listening to the radio program Studio 360, and this theme came up again. In a feature on Andy Warhol, host Kurt Anderson asked, "Many say that Warhol destroyed traditional standards in the art world -- was this good or bad?"

Guest and close associate of Warhol, John Cale of the Velvet Underground said:

It’s essential. If you’re going to be an artist, you’ve got to inspire. I mean not just people around you who understand what you’re doing, but the ones who don’t understand what you are doing. You [might not] know what it’s doing, but it’s very good at what it’s doing. Every once in a while, you get caught by surprise.

I can only hope that my art is that kind of puzzling!