To-day I met an artist.
Intermission at Sunday in the Park with George, and her work was on exhibition in a side theatre. Sunday is a show about many things, but most ostensibly it’s a show about art, and the production saw fit to partner with local artists and showcase a guest artist for each night of its run. She was standing off-centre in the room, blending in with the guests, her many canvases arrayed in a great half-circle around them all.
“Hi,” she said to me, genially.
“Hi!” I said softly in return. Why would a stranger say hi to me in this space? I wondered. Unless she’s—
“Are you …”
“I’m the artist,” she said. “I’m Amanda.”
And I didn’t know what to say. I gently stepped around, silent, admiring her work—bold, joyous swatches of colour, but highly abstract and ponderous—as she took up conversation with another theatregoer. And then I discreetly excused myself and joined the low murmur of the hallway.
What I wish I could have conveyed to her:
Your art moves me. I’m sorry I don’t have the vocabulary to express how it does, but it does. I have no experience at all in the world of painting, and so who am I to pass judgement directly on your work as a painter? But I am at times a musician, and in my mind your paintings resolve into distinct splashes of sound, melodies and moods, so in a way you are conveying something to me. And I wish I could describe what is that you are conveying, but it is entirely above the ability of speech to capture. I don’t even know if it corresponds at all to your vision. But even though we may speak different languages, a conversation between two artists has taken place.
But also:
I am trying my best to imagine how it feels to be you at this moment. I practise empathy. And here you are, an artist selected from dozens, hundreds, to have your work exhibited to-night in a private gallery, the gestalt of your artistic vision on display for a throng of theatregoers to peruse. You are baring your soul to the crowd and looking for any sign of engagement, any flicker of recognition, any hint of “yes, I hear you, I know what you’re trying to say!” from us.
But these people, they just shuffle in and out, passing the time between acts of a show. Maybe at best you read the arches of their eyebrows and register mild amusement, at worst you confront a mass of blank expressions, a sea of indifference. They don’t know what to say to you, they don’t know how to connect with you. Perhaps they mutter generic strings of praise—great work! it’s beautiful! wow!—the kind of fig leaf they’d offer to any other artist in your place, as if they were following a script, interacting with a nondescript archetype of an artist instead of the unique and fully realised person that is you.
You completely understand them. They haven’t immersed themselves in the great unfolding tradition that is modern art, gathered the context to understand the shape of your contribution to the frontiers of that conversation, and why should they? Their lives have taken them in a thousand and one other directions, all equally as valid. At best their world brushes against yours obliquely, and vice versa. If they have nothing to say, so be it. But you can’t help but hurt a little with every face that stops by, evaluates your oeuvre, fails to connect, and shuffles along.
I am sorry to have been one of those faces to-night.
MORE POSTS