art and writing

I've been watching a few videos lately about abstract art and what it is - what makes a good piece of abstract art. It's really fascinating because I can relate what's being said to my own art. I pretty much always do abstract art these days. 

The thing is....that idea people have about contemporary art and abstract art - that it's just weird and not very good...I can relate to that. I've been to some modern art exhibitions and, just like with absurdist drama, I feel a sense of despair, because I feel like nothing is being offered to me. I literally don't get it. I don't know what I'm looking at. Which is fair enough. I'm not a great appreciator of art, at least of viewing art in exhibitions. I don't feel strongly about it. I don't get that excited feeling you get when you're going to a concert.

There is some art that I really like though. My favorite kind of art is impressionism. I love the tension between the work as a painting - how you can see the brush strokes and it's very obviously a painting - and what the work is representing - how you can see the most intricate details even within the roughness of the paint - and I love the idea that that is somehow a more faithful representation of the scene than a highly realistic painting or a photograph would be. 

In my own art, for a long time I was trying to achieve something like that, but I've moved more towards dropping any attempt to convey anything real. There is an element of realism because I like to incorporate lines that are inspired by letters or are actual words and writing. I've always been fascinated by the idea of somehow combining language and visual art. One of the reasons for that is that, when I learnt about creative writing and how to do creative writing, I was struck by the similarity of what we were taught about writing to what I experienced in making art. 

It was refreshing. I'd always felt like I couldn't do creative writing but here was a teacher who was also a writer, telling us how to write and it was just like the way that I do art, which is that I don't start off with a good idea. I just play around and experiment and see what develops. She said you can do that with writing, which is something I had never heard before. She taught us some games you can play with words where something creative and interesting just emerges. Then, when you see something interesting, you can do more with it. 

I did find that, while writing in that way does lead to something worthwhile, for me it didn't lead to a novel or short story or some kind of 'proper' literature. It was something more experimental - like the modernist literature of Virginia Woolf or James Joyce. 

There's still the idea among some people who appreciate abstract art and make videos about what makes good abstract art, that the artist needs to be trying to convey a very definite point. I think in a way that's true but in a way it's not. Again, it's like literature. The creator is setting up a forum within which the responder can construct their own meaning. That's why good literature speaks to us so personally - because we as the reader have constructed the meaning in our own way. Likewise with art. I don't know what point I'm trying to make in my art...I'm just trying to create certain effects and make something engaging, but I don't have an exact idea about what I'm trying to convey, although, as the work takes shape I get a better idea of what I'm trying to achieve and the impressions I want to convey. 

When I first started wanting to really improve my art, I watched a lot of YouTube videos, and I aspired to make art like I saw in those videos. Of course, my art is nothing like the art I was seeing, never has been, but I thought I could develop and become a 'better' artist. 

Then I wanted to get into digital art, so I bought an art tablet and got some software. The problem is, I still wasn't very 'good' at art, even with traditional art supplies, and using an art tablet and doing digital art is harder. I was trying to do art like all the YouTube tutorials say it should be done and I couldn't do it. I just gave up and put away my art tablet. 

But then one day I thought, I want to do art. I want to use my tablet. I want to use the software. I want to draw and paint with traditional art supplies. I just started doing it because I wanted to do it. I just forgot about the tutorials and the preconceived ideas about how to do art well and how to develop as an artist. I just created and had fun. And interestingly, as I did my own thing in that way and worked on achieving different effects, my technical skills developed. I actually went back to some of the tutorials to see how to do certain things that I wanted to do. But mostly it was just from doing it that my skills developed. 

I can't do art like anyone else, but I don't want to anyway. Same with writing. I can't do what anyone else does, but I can do what I do.