Outsider Art

So, I guess I think of myself as an artsy sort of person... I draw, I paint, I make cartoons. I write stuff. I doodle. I take copious amounts of pictures of creepy dolls. I try to fill my free time with art. I'd like, someday, to maybe make my living via art. I think it would be nice to get paid to make things. I don't think I'd ever call myself an "artist." Not yet, at least. I'm just a guy who dabbles in art. A hobbyist with some vague long term goals.

I wish, sometimes, I was more involved with the artistic community... I wish, sometimes, I was more immersed in that world. But I'm really on the outside of it. I appreciate it, but I'm also somewhat cynical about it. I enjoy it, but I feel out of my depth in it. I often find art frustrating, pretentious, obnoxious, confounding, overwhelming and wholly destructive to my ego. I've never quite belonged with the real artists. I'm self-taught and under-educated. I'm too linear and too pop. I'm no visionary, no innovator, no provocateur... I'm just some guy who draws weird pictures of U.S. presidents as Good-N-Plenty's.

But I love art. I do. And I love all kinds of art. All kinds of writing. All kinds of music. I love that there's so much variety, even as I lament how little of it I'm capable of. I love how talented people can be, even I as fret over how talentless I usually feel. I find inspiration in it, even as it makes me question why I'm bothering to make anything at all when so many people can do it so much better than I can. Good art is beautiful and amazing and thrilling and it makes me feel like dirt. Bad art, on the other hand, inspires me to keep trying... my thought is always "If this jackass can make a go of it, than maybe I can too." There's a definite catalyzing power in mediocre to terrible art... It spurs me to try. Awesome art usually spurs me to curl up in the fetal position.

I do this mostly outside of the company of other artists and writers and creative types... It's partly because I find passion of any sort to be irritating. Irritating because I don't have it, and irritating because... well, passionate people have a tendency to go overboard. And creative types tend to have passion in surplus. I stay outside, too, partly because I feel like a poseur. Whether it's in art or writing or anything, really, I feel like I'm a pretender... some dude with a tiny smudge of potential standing amidst people who have made art their life. I was showing my paintings at a local art show, once, when a man asked me what my art meant to me. I didn't have an answer... at least, not one that satisfied him. I told him I just liked making things. I just put paint on a canvas and moved it around until it looked interesting. I didn't have any deeper motive than that. I didn't have anything that I was trying to say. I didn't have a message I wanted to convey in blue and green swathes of acrylic color. I just like, at the end of it, having something that didn't exist until I made it. This made the man inexplicably angry, and I felt like a complete tool. I should have at least made up an answer!

It's just hard for me to take it so seriously. I do think art is important, but I can't easily articulate why. It's definitely something that improves life... an amenity that keeps existence from slipping into mere survival. But it's more than that. It gives depth to society, and to culture... For example, having the gorgeous Calatrava wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum gives Milwaukee a real landmark, a cultural touchstone that can act as visual shorthand. It adds a dimension of character to a place with no skyline or real monuments of note (I don't think the Bronze Fonze counts...). It's art with a purpose. It's not just beautification, it's identification... and I think that's important. Still, most art isn't that grand...

I get envious and sad when I read about gallery openings, or shows, or curated exhibits at museums... I want, sometimes, to be part of that world. But I don't think I belong in that world, either. I don't know how I would respond to people wandering around, discussing my art... mostly because there's little to discuss. Even at the little arts & crafts fairs I've done, it gets unnerving listening to people talk about things I've made as if I'm not sitting there hoping to make a sale. One man explained to his wife just what I was trying to accomplish with the way I utilized brush strokes (I think he said I was trying to create an atmosphere of claustrophobia or something similarly ridiculous). I didn't have the heart to say I wasn't trying to accomplish anything... I sort of felt bad that I wasn't.

Does anybody really set out to make Art with a capital "A"? And if they do, don't they feel like pretentious knobs when they do it? Who buys into it? Should I? Am I missing out on some key component of art appreciation that would make me a better person, a more enriched human being and maybe help me catapult out of the realm of mere hobbyist into that of a real artist? Do most people who make things have these same questions? It's like a crisis of artistic faith.

At any rate, I can't see the status quo changing... and that's not so bad. But it would be nice, I suppose, to get the hell over it and maybe fall in line with some other folks like me... But I'm pretty sure they'll think I'm just a big lame.