Thursday, October 12, 2017

Being An Artist or an Artistic Craftsman

I posted this on facebook in response to Massive Voodoo and like a good human who is vulnerable to vanity I wanted to post it here and share with whoever comes across it. 

Here it is:

Roman, I am the dark side to your lighter side. 
I will tell you a story. I was in Bratislava Slovakia out on a walk with my little monster of a daughter and we passed by a building with an open door. It was a massive artist studio with all sorts of tools, paints, canvasses all over the place. On the walls were random paintings and pieces of art. There were piled sculptures in one area, and airbrushes and other strange machines of art in corners. 

In the center of this art-junkyard was a fat man in his underwear, a little bit of his butt crack showing, drinking a coffee, staring into space. What amazed me was that the studio before me was the same studio I have at my home, only on a grander scale. 

I suddenly felt a deep sorrow. I realized that I had chosen a medium which cannot exist on a grand scale...that our miniature-art has a miniature audience. and I lamented that the work that I devote my life to is only for a certain tribe of mostly men who like war and weapons but also want beauty and color. 

I started to imagine my life if I had taken up a different medium of art. Who I would have public exhibitions with people drinking wine, looking at my art and seeing the world differently. Maybe some people would leave deeply emotional because I had blown their minds with the intense profoundness of my work. 

It was somewhere in another universe...an alternate reality of what could have been. 

Now I look at reality and I am painting armies for gamers so that I can be paid to paint full time...and I skip out on your competitions even when I have great concepts and messages to send because I have pressures of completing work so that I can get paid. Lots of space marines and tanks...it hurts my soul to only make the art of war, because what I really want to do is tell the stories of the people I lost in life, the pain of being human, and the joy too, and the things I've seen that no one else has seen. 

But I realized I am all wrong. 

My mother took me to see all of the galleries near her home. Places where artists are selling their work. Beautiful works...some of it...lots of it very kitschy though showing only images which look nice but without raw emotion. I spoke with the gallery owners and they mostly told me the painters are retired people. People who already made their living doing banking or being lawyers and now that they have time, they paint. And they don't hope for money but still want to sell their art so that the art goes somewhere, not in a pile on the floor of their studio. 

That is when I realize that we are in fact very lucky for all of the war and weapons and games because it is what powers a market for our art. I am able to paint all day and sell my work because the medium targets a small but passionate group of people who give their treasures just to own a beautiful set of killers and warriors. I know it is good work too, when I see how one of my customers has a big smile when he sees his new models. 

One day I will become one of those artists that makes work to helps my fellow humans understand their existence better. Or that gives my impression of what is humanity. But I cannot do that, until I am sculpting my own figures from scratch. For now I am happy as an artist craftsman. Painting little warriors and selling them to my customers, patrons, and admirers. 

Already this post is too long and I dont think you will get this far. If you do, thank you for hearing my story. Maybe it makes sense to you?

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