Spread The Lovekin

The beginning is often a reaction to something I see or experience, and grows usually out of sketches or quick collages. I’m talking about recent stuff, weightier works, things that have real thought behind them. Lots of art I’ve made is shamefully vacuous in intent; it’s been more busy-work than meaningful creation. Not to say commercial, but approximately so since, after the last brushstrokes I’d feel no connection between this art and why it was created.

Wow. Shocking and sad to say that. I’ve given-away lots of my work out of this feeling of disassociation. I tried to start a business based on lottery-ing away my originals.

David Zizmor with free art

The venture was short-lived and doomed to failure from the start, but now looking back, was a good exercise. The whole convoluted thing was helpful for me, because it attached meaning to the stuff I was making. I’ve always made art; my mom is an artist. But until around about 2002, I was a sporadic creator. Once I got the bug to show my stuff, I practiced more. I see how I am now, where if I miss a few days in the studio I’m suddenly going through withdrawal, and I recognize that the whole giving-away-my-art thing was a necessary step in my evolution. The whole thing feels now like a bridge between my artist selves, the one from before who wouldn’t even call himself an artist, and the present person who’s typing this now, trying to figure out what he’s doing and why.

So…….. The Beginning. It starts as a reaction, is quickly rendered via any available media. Sometimes this sketch will sit for a time fermenting, other times it leaps quickly as another speedily composed item onto a more substantial foundation, lately hand-made wood panels. And then I get to work on it (and most likely several others concurrently). Likely, its original intent will change. It’ll become about something different than whatever started it off, then as it evolves and is eventually finished, it has a multi-layered history of meaning.

It seems now that this might contribute to my confusion over simple questions of intent. When asked, I get all tongue-tied. I don’t know what to say. There’s just so much to explain, but it’s all buried in too many layers. In the past, I’ve shrugged it off, pushed the work away in the form of lotteries and gifts. I think it’s time to dig-in and figure some things out.