the resistance

I’m sort of an outsider artist in the sense that I taught/teach myself how to use various media to produce visual artwork. The tendency to back away from the table when someone asks me to work on any specific project to produce a defined outcome is always there as I tell myself that with no formal training perhaps I will be unable to do whatever is proposed. Though these types of challenges present parameters that make me feel constrained, bring up immediately resistance, a huge part of me could care less when I remember that taking a chance has gotten me to this exact place with my art. Yet when I was asked to come up with my interpretation of the human lungs via collage art, a medium I am more than comfortable with, my first response was to resist by throwing down a gauntlet -- if I had to do it, so did everyone else in whatever way they could even if they never produced a piece of art in their life.

The due date drew closer. Others had taken on the challenge and finished their piece. I on the other hand still had not sat down to do one thing; the rebel in me was resistant right down to the front lines until she finally faced the fact that time had run out. In my final act of defiance, I jumped down into the trenches refusing to go the table where I work, deciding to only use one magazine to source pictures to make the collage, and dead set against giving this piece much thought. And somehow no matter how much I had fought it the expression of what a lung really is rose up. Somewhere in me was/is artistic expression that took control, made me put down my arms as my hands picked up arsenal for a whole new order.

I rarely refer to myself as an artist; dubbing me as such runs counter to my belief that ascribed titles can have a tendency to make the arts and the person attached to whatever they do unapproachable. That those producing can get so caught up in the aura of their importance they become incapable of relating to those who admire what they are doing. I/my work need to reach out and touch so…

keep your peepers open! ®