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Note to self: The desert can get cold.  I don’t mean the kind of cold where you can bundle up and do fun aerobic activity in, like ice skate or have a snowball fight.  No, it’s a bone chilling cold that comes from sitting still for hours at a time in front of the easel in a tent that likes pretending it’s a refrigerator.  I was not prepared for this.  I brought one heavy wool sweater and I’m sick of it.  Paint takes on a tar-like consistency that mangles good sable brushes.  Paintings that I expected to set up overnight are still wet and sticky, so I now have six paintings going.  All wet.  That’s not a bad thing, but it makes maneuvering around my abbreviated studio area a dicey proposition, especially since I’m forced to also wear my nice coyote vest over said heavy wool sweater while painting, as it’s the warmest thing I brought. Factor in a pair of heavy sheepskin gloves, and you’ve got a rhinoceros trying to needlepoint.

I’ve been sitting here with a hodgepodge of half blocked in pieces, wallowing in the self-imposed peer pressure brought on by being surrounded by productive artists, and feeling the labor pains of a new style that wants a midwife.  I know we all struggle with our art, we all talk every day here under the big top.  It’s gratifying, in a small, small way, to know that others are struggling too, and I don’t mean that to say misery loves company.  But, being human, we have all absolutely convinced ourselves that no one is struggling quite as much as we are.  Everyone else here looks to me as if they are moving swimmingly and effortlessly along, blissfully turning out canvases like biscuits from a well-greased tray.  No one could possibly be feeling the angst that I am, the utter self-deprecation that cloaks itself in thoughts like, What was I thinking coming here?  Or, even better, in the voice of a certain influential family member, You’ll be selling portraits in Grand Central Station for a nickel...there’s a million artists better than you!   It becomes a bedlam that calls for large doses of Pink Floyd and vodka.

 But, open book that I am, I have confided my existential crisis to a few kindly souls, and relieved to know this twisting agony is not unique nor my own personal neurotic albatross to bear.  It comforts me and lets me continue in the face of struggle.  It also make me think, why the hell hasn’t a European tour promoter come up with a new kind of tour to supplement the mainstream cultural tours of Florence, Rome, Paris?  There’s Al Capone/Gangster Tours of Chicago, there ought to be a new Tours de France: Van Gogh in Arles: Assault of Gaugin and Institutionalized in San Remy.  I’d be first in line.  Just think, the unknown works of the Great Masters: the fits of pique and the holes punched in the wall, broken brushes and rent canvases, arrest records, psychologists’ notes (depending on the century and statute of limitations on patient-client privilege).  I remember withering upon entering the Uffizi, the Galleria dell'Accademia, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, and weeping over my own paintings later at night.  Oh, what a relief it would have been to this young artist to know Caravaggio was a criminal- a felon!   That Michelangelo’s father was disgusted with him for choosing art as a career and suffered from low self-esteem!  (The Agony and the Ecstasy would have been helpful reading.)  

The artistic struggle that exists within an often solitary work environment can break the budding artist unfamiliar and unprepared for this mine-ridden emotional psychological territory.  From what I can recall from art school days, the most the topic was ever addressed was maybe a fleeting, “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”  You might as well tell a teenaged girl that those five extra pounds make her look healthy and the glasses make her face unique.   I propose new classes at the university level:  how would a, say, Psychology of Creativity 101 go over?  Or, The Blank Canvas: You DON’T Need a Straightjacket and Lithium! ? My guess is those classes would be standing room only and there’d be a hell of a lot more well adjusted artists pouring out of art schools telling arrogant gallery owners to stick their attitudes where the sun don't shine.  Perhaps a cooking class: Ramen Noodles and The Food Pyramid? OK, maybe not.  But if we had Psychology for Creative Productivity classes maybe we wouldn’t have to battle the myth of the starving tortured artist so much.  Sure, there’s a bunch of books out there on the topic, self help books, but most of them are written by opportunists with a bent towards self-promotion and prey on us artists desperate for an answer.

Baloney.

No one can tell you the answer.

You just gotta go through it.

I’ve been here almost three weeks, at what some of us are affectionately calling the Fine Art Boot Camp Expo, and there’s no way out but through.  That’s a thought that actually comforts me, much as the Serenity Prayer gives a recovering alcoholic the strength to go on.  Then I can take a Xanax at 3 am and leaf through Georgia O’Keeffe’s abstracts until I finally pass out around 4 and Framer Dude awakens me at 8 with a chopsaw.  Yeah, I’m painting everyday. I’m an artist!  This is the life!  Would someone just get me another sweater to wear?