Blog: Passion and Art

Arts need to be passionate. 

Art needs to be extravagant.  And by that I don’t mean expensive.

Art needs to spring from the irrepressible, uncontrolled, ungoverned.

Art needs to be extraordinary.  

Art needs to be unpretentious, filled with fantasy, wonderful and joy.

Art without passion is missing the soul of the artist, is missing the spirit of the artist, is missing the I in the work.

Without passion art, in  my case, paintings, is no different than wall paper.

This morning out of curiosity I typed in the search bar abstract paintings.  I found abstract paintings being sold at JCPennys, Home Depot, Williams Sonoma and Nieman Marcus, to list a few.  In the 70’s-90’s I sold my work to JCPennys, American TV, and Nieman Marcus. I was excited I was making money and better yet I was learning how to paint, freely and with passion.  It is this passion, this desire to be able to paint freely, repeated over and over, and after painting 200 of the same image for a Hampton’s Motel I realized that, yes, I had learned how to paint, but I had lost my freedom, my passion- I had lost my soul.  So I changed, I decided to take another path. And that is the path I am currently on. Was that earlier path important to me and my work? Absolutely it was. It allowed me to change direction and point out to those who follow my blog who actually read what I write to understand where I am coming from.  Why I as “art” needs to be passionate.

Back when I was in  my early 30’s, I did street shows to support myself and my work.  I used to say to folks buying my work – that I wanted to make my work affordable enough for everyone to have an original piece of art in their homes.  So is that what is happening today with the rapidly produced works, to meet the current trends in color.  No, art has changed and how art is used within our homes and places of businesses has changed.  There should be no misunderstanding there is a difference between what is “art” today and what is decorative and safe. The passion is missing.