In the Grip · Wednesday April 29, 2009 by Julie
I just finished another painting, to mixed reviews. “But what do you think about it?” Bob asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “In a lot of ways, I seem to be in the grip of an artistic vision, sort of like one of Salman Rushdie’s stories, that was floating around and decided to use me as its way of manifesting. The art that I actually like to look at is not the art that I find myself painting, over and over.”
“What do you like?”
“Well, Belinda Eaton, and Anne Belov, for two,” I said. “I like their sense of depth, both within the square of canvas and in the mind.”
“Is that what you’re after?”
“Kind of. I think what I’m doing is exploring what people see, especially if it isn’t there, and what they don’t see, especially if it is there. What the mind does with a data flood.”
“A post-Internet inquiry?”
“Yeah. But then, should I push to move towards making the kind of art I’d actually pay to have on my walls?”
“Absolutely not. You’re vision is so far from theirs that you’d lose something important if you tried to become more like them.”
“But what if I gained something, too?”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” said Bob.
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