Anticipating that this blog post would be my fiftieth, I recently printed out all of the previous ones & read them through. I placed them in categories as though they were in the chapters of a book & I wondered if, beyond the obvious one, there wasn’t some common thread that wove them together, however loosely. Ultimately I decided that if there is such a thread, it is merely this: Everything I’ve written has been deeply personal & exquisitely honest.
Four years, 7 months & roughly 24 days ago, I started my blog as a way of both feeding the Search Engine Optimization beast, which apparently craves fresh content on a regular basis, & of connecting with visitors to my website. And since my propensity for teaching is never quiescent for long, it seemed likely that I would have no end of things to share.
From the beginning, though, I eschewed a “how-to” approach. As I stated early on, it was never my intention to repeat information in my blog that can be found in hundreds of books. On the other hand, I knew that eventually I would be getting some things off my chest (e.g., anyone, given the physical capability, can learn to draw) & that I would be pestering people about other things (e.g., it’s unethical & illegal to sell a painting that’s been copied or derived from someone else’s image). What I didn’t know was that I would get as much satisfaction out of writing my blog as I do out of painting & drawing!
This is probably because my blog has presented me with the opportunity to sort worrying things out (e.g., why the sound of a freight train’s horn suddenly made me sad) & to connect curious dots up (e.g., why the idea of woolly mammoths in my backyard makes me so ludicrously happy). To my mind, this process of sorting & connecting, if it’s to be worthwhile at all, necessarily requires as much integrity & unflinching self-scrutiny as does art-making itself. Happily, the reward for all this effort is bragging rights to yet another oeuvre.
For that is what the entirety of my blog – a collection of essays, really – amounts to: The narrative about my creative process &, in random bits & pieces, the story of my experiences with art-making. And if at least some of this has resonated, however tangentially, with the reader, then for the last 4 years, 7 months & roughly 24 days, I’ve been doubly rewarded!