Artist Statement

I am not an artist.

About Art...

Well, I am. But I don't feel like one.

I don't feel like an artist because taking it from within is a real struggle for me. And that's number one. To be creative any other way strips my soul naked of art. I grope about in the darkness of creative integrity trying to come up with a complete soul, a personality, a style without the interference of another's interpretation. Perhaps this is why I'm often bothered by others doing what I do. I abhor the creative dishonesty of doing what others do. It's already been done. How can anyone say they created it when it's already been created? I beat myself up in fear for the integrity of my soul in creative expression. Yet I know I came up with the concept of bead portraiture on my own and my writing is always taken from within me.

I guess I'm just hung up on my perspective as a writer. Writing always speaks for me, how I'm feeling. That's my soul. That's where I derive all of my creative energy as a writer. And that's what I'm doing right now. But then there's art. It doesn't speak for me in the same explicit way that writing does. And it often is not interpreted clearly. Well, my writing is interpreted too. And often wrongly. But often because the personal biases and prejudices of the readers assist them in interpreting it in a way that's most comfortable for them. That's why there's always so much conflict with the interpretation of religious texts. "For God so loved the world" means this to that person and that to this person What the hell is love anyway? And does that include everybody all of the time? Or only when it's most convenient? But at least from that written statement one can conclude that God did love the world. And the rest is up to interpretation. But try to pull off a clear expression of anything as a visual artist.

I discovered at a very young age that there are other means of communication than talking. They may not be clear ways, but ways all the same. And it's the responsibility of the communicator to make those ways as clear as possible. The clearer the communication, the sharper the expression, the better the art. I'm very shy and have been my whole life. Okay, so I'm a coward. But I also had a very unhappy past. And unhappy pasts make very thoughtful presents. Obsessive thoughtfulness bleeds creative expression. It's a timeless trap of time. I turned to art when I still suffered the inner and outer alienation of going to school hungry.  And I still create my pain away today. Not far away mind you, as its always there; just away enough that I can pretend not to feel it anymore. Writing silly things down helped me rid myself of the extreme poverty bitterness as early as the fourth grade. It atoned for my sitting alone with a refusal to play with the other kids, no matter how badly I wanted to.

Peace within began with writing, my first and true love. This is how my feelings got out. And though I began with no intention to extend them any further than the page, that changed in my mid to late twenties when I decided that I need not just to express my feelings, I needed to share them. Everyone has their way of coping with stress and expressing their disillusionment with themselves and the world. For many people it's just plain talking, the most immediate and complete form of communication. But being so shy, that often doesn't work for me. I felt incomplete. I needed to reach out when all stresses of holding it in and bigger stresses of trying to let it out failed me. I remedy my sadness with writing. I bead my love into portraits. Art is how I communicate. And this explains the new dire need to share it. If people didn't read my writing or see my portraits then they would probably never know how much I care for them. Art gives me a feeling of satisfaction and wholeness with myself, peace in knowing that I've expressed how I truly feel. I have straightened things out in my head and my heart when all other mediums just don't seem to drive the feeling home.

My feelings hurt easily. It's all a result of trying to love absolutely everything about absolutely everybody and punishing myself in heart and mind for failing to do so sometimes… And hurting because people criticize me for awkward superficial differences that I cannot help. Sometimes some of us are just too different to be compatible. My heart is so different from my mind. My heart wants to love everyone and it does. Yet my mind feels uncomfortable with those who are just too different to make me feel comfortable. How can I possibly be compatible with myself?

If anything, portraiture, or any kind of self-exploratory art, achieves self-understanding. Therapy. It helps me to take a good look at myself and appreciate the true love that no one else can see - The sad eyes that see too much, the sad ears that hear too much and the sad mind that never gives itself a break. Through my art, I just want to try to see myself as others see me, to detach myself from myself for awhile, my soul from my body. The feeling artist needs a higher expression of love than mere spoken words to live and to live happily. The thinking artist bonds with self in a struggle to see the good side of others and to hear the kind things others have to say. Or the not so kind things...

A mouthy art business woman once said my drawings looked like Picasso, that my naive and childish drawing experiments with bold shapes, bright colours and raw emotions was copy-catting. Shame on me. Well, I'll have you know that I don't think I had even seen a Picasso painting beyond the one or two casual and flippant flickings through cheap art magazines. Forgotten. And to this day, I have no idea how my emotional musings with square heads and triangle tears of that time could ever be compared to the dead pan, geometrically intricate images of a Master who actually knew what he was doing.

Perhaps I shouldn't take such offence. And I don't. Perhaps I should be flattered. And I am. Disbelieving but flattered. And hurt that the flattery was not delivered to flatter but to shatter my sense of soul and creativity. And I know that. There's no allegation that a truly creative person finds more shattering than to be accused of not being creative, of not creating, of taking something that someone else created, of stealing another's ideas. Perhaps this is why I cannot allow myself to go to school: I have a pathological fear of stealing, of lying. To claim someone else's thought and ideas as your own is to steal, is to lie. They are not your own. Though I have so much respect for those who can make their way through the hard work and time-commitment of the mainstream school system without having the doubts and fears that I have. And you know what else? Upon looking up Picasso images online, I agree: my childish, naive, square-headed, triangle-eyed figures did kinda look like the works of the Master. But just kinda. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

My artwork will never be as good as Picasso, though it will never be as bad as turning against who I really am. And when at risk, I suffer a bout of creative conscience: the soul. Well then, I have a soul in the art too, it seems. That pressures me quite strictly to not do it if it has no meaning, to not to do it if it doesn't have anything to say. Okay, so I may be an artist then. But a great deal of my art is based on my eyes and what I see, not on my soul and what I feel as is the case with my writing. This is obviously why I consider myself a writer first, a visual artist second if at all.

So where does art come from then?

Some artists say "absolutely nowhere".

And what does art say?

Some artists say "absolutely nothing".

And I believe them. Everybody is different. Everyone's idea of art is not my idea. I believe art should come from the soul, from within. That's why I find it hard to say I'm an artist.

I attached a photograph of myself to this statement not because arts experts encouraged me to do so saying "people will want to get a more immediate sense of the writer by seeing what she looks like" or something like that. I attached it so people can see how ordinary I am and they won't be scared of me. Or maybe it's so I won't be scared of myself.

Elaine
May 5, 2004
August 20, 2004

The sentiment still holds:
March 6, 2006
October 4&5, 2006