Here's something I found and have had on my studio wall for a few years now. Lyn Foulkes has been around the block a few times and is still here. He was born in Yakima Washington , which makes him a neighbor of sorts. I'm not so crazy about his work, but the sentiment here rings true for me.
I began exhibiting at twenty-six
critics thought my work was tough
I got in all the art magazines
museums started buying my stuff.
They made me the belle of the ball
I could do no wrong at all
I won the Paris Biennale
I thought I would never fall.
But I started doing something different
they didn't like that very much
they wanted me to do the same old thing
they thought I was out to lunch.
They wanted me to be consistent
to throw away my heart
They wanted me to be nonresistant
to promote the tradition of art.
I've learned a lot about art
since I was twenty six
Like trusting my own solutions
not worrying about politics
I think I'm pretty sure what makes real art
comes from deep inside
Not flippity-flop to get to the top
or learning to swallow your pride.
1 comment:
That is the dilemma of our kind of thinking...always trying to achieve our best work, which may shift many times as we mature. Even if we work in series, it still puzzles people. I think that the "public" is so used to being spoon-fed images which allow them to able to identify an artist (it makes them feel aware and educated perhaps), that it is disturbing to have that artist move away from what is familiar. Also, bodies of work are harder to catalog when there is so much shifting of ideas or images. But what we must do, we must, to maintain our integrity.
Post a Comment