Limbo

Here is the dichotomy of an artist:  when a person is happy, they are usually busy, loving, living, playing; they are not creating.  However, when they are sad, here flows the endless stream of creative vision. When you are distraught, you are alone with plenty of time to make art.

Happiness explores and sadness dissects.  The former offers more 'specimens for dissection', the latter comes to a full understanding of that which it has found.

Why does dissecting a situation produce sadness?  I think any thing studied enough brings to light elements that are unexpected, unpalatable and even disgusting.  Dissection opens a concept up and exposes contradiction- indeed exposes that which makes us human.  I believe that humans have a natural tendency to lionize life, see it as invincible and incorruptible, making myths we are also making disappointment when we cannot live up to the things we have canonized as 'ideal'.  And so the arts are in a continual state of revolution.  As it should be.

  The piquant touch of a melancholy is what makes me reach out, what enchants me ... letting go, to know the perfection of possibility and chase it and lose it and lose it, to create under the stars of mischance and look forward to the morning.  Knowing that being human means hurting and lying and contradicting yourself and still living to love and offering your own.  How can a person deny that penultimate ache to the climax of life?  I paint that because I see that above all with every person I meet, but more, that they never get to the climax, like they are in a limbo, waiting, waiting, waiting, and never reaching out and taking.