Words are powerful, so the tale goes. One might even say they are a source of generativity. I, too, am of this belief, which is why I’ve found myself dodging the claim of being an “artist”. Though I have found myself ensnared by an obsessive bout of drawing, painting, or writing, I cannot pledge my soul to the cult of art just yet, perhaps because I cannot begin to describe the very thing itself. “But that’s just it,” the age-old existentialists chide, “Art can be anything.” And yet, I say it cannot. Art is certainly elusive, but I would like to believe those of us with a, dare I say, distinguished eye, know what it is and know what it is not. The snob in me wants to say the genesis of art must come from studying the masters in some capacity and digging deep, but I know better than to suggest that it is merely the product of compelling intention and technical skill. Art is greater than the sum of its parts: more than a collection of brush strokes and an exploration of an idea. Some say it’s the love child of the medium and you pushing back it. In this case, your suffering is the crown of nobility if and only if, the eyes of others determine your work to be commendable.
For me, art is a feeling. I know it when I see it. I regret to inform most of us who pursued painting contrived depictions of grand concepts such as “womanhood” and “blackness” that I do not consider that art. Sorrows, sorrows, prayers to your tawdry canvases and Amazon acrylics. I am guilty of these trivial pursuits as well, and I implore both of us to try harder. But please, do not hesitate to try again.
Art lies in the knotty roots of the mangrove tree wriggled loose from its enclave and cast away at sea. A lone figure emerges on the horizon: the artist. With a familiar silhouette, a tree floats into our bay, but when we look closer, we see a terrifying enmeshment of life and origin. Art happens in the messy contradiction or what I term “funk”. Art should remind us of the familiar portrayed through a lens that refracts something we know to be immutably true. This truth should be difficult – to utter, to name. Perhaps it brings us shame to name it, but it is all the more palpable for that reason.
The Artist is tasked with untangling the knot, working out the kinks, and naming the thing we are afraid to name. Like Eve in the Garden, She may even be tasked with creating new word. She will be subjected to scrutiny for daring to shape her lips in new ways as we all know that was Shakespeare’s job and no one else’s. But still, She will try, and risk being alienated from the form completely.
My favorite example of this contradiction is the intersection of a critical examination of “blackness” as a social marker and the color theory behind the color black. The dialectic between the two illuminates something we know to be true about the limits of race as a category and the pluralism that exists within skin tone. The truest black is blue and brown. Blackness is brown is blue. “Black boys shine blue in the moonlight”.
I do not reject the label artist because I do not aspire to be one. I reject it now, because I have not yet completed my mission of disentanglement – to make seen to others what I see so clearly. Some of my ambitions will be revealed over the course of several publications on this blog, and I hope to illuminate these visions for you and all who so desperately need them to sustain and to feel understood.
Until then, I will be in pursuit of my Artist’s robe with the humble tools at my disposal.
Kyra Offline 