Art as Religion

I was watching a documentary on art once and the artist that was being interviewed spoke about being fully involved with her art.

She said that she made it her best friend. When she had a problem, when she was happy, when she was sad or anxious, she went to her art.

This was eye opening for me.

I always talked to God with all of my issues.

The conversations were usually pretty easy to have. God knows all my BS and I know that God knows… so those conversations aren’t about putting on airs of arrogance.

But I am an artist.

Which is a very sensitive label to embody and I thought, how can I really dig into my human experience the way this woman did through art.

In 2018, I was immersed in making a series called Co9G (City of 9 Gates).

A reference to this human body.

The gates being the two eyes, the two nostrils, the two ears, the mouth the genitals and the anus.

The entrance and exits to the body. The “City”

It was a portrait series, that I won’t really go into right now, but I revisited it recently.

Revisited with an evolved perspective.

The series had been done with a technique called stippling. It is really tedious. Images are made by the accumulation of SOOOO MANY little dots. I started doing it in school and eventually abandoned it because it was just too much work; though it was really beautiful.

I’ve since picked the technique back up and one day a good friend of mine asked me why the hell I was doing it. He said “Baby, why the hell are you doing this. It’s ridiculous, you can paint much faster, and actually, you are a wonderful photographer. Take a picture. This is a waste of time.”

Please imagine a bald bearded man that looks like the wisest Persian man you’d ever seen, that’s what my friend looks like, and he calls everyone close to him “baby”. It’s actually quite charming, while dismantling this practice that was essentially mental masturbation for me. He was right. Why was I doing this?

It was a whole lot.

For the past few months now, I have been trying to understand this human experience through art though.

Luckily, the key to understanding is humility, and as an artist, a sensitive artist, it seems that humility is readily accessible and very abundant.

I have spent countless hours on fine tuning the things I make. The moods, the process, the technique.

The thought that goes into anything that I want to do, and the things I do to make them go to production.

What I am learning is that there is a lot of renunciation required to maintain sanity when offering your work to the world.

I am very much of the mindset, “If you have an opinion, put it into your work.”

But more than the crippling critical scrutiny that one would expect, I am seeing that my personal opinion, my work can be very easily overlooked.

It’s terrifying, it’s completely frustrating, it’s overwhelming, it’s depressing, it’s painful.

Then…

It is so enlightening.

ART as RELIGION.

Enlightening!

We wake up (which is a miracle in itself, because sleep is literally putting “living” on autopilot while you go off and do, unconscious) and expect.

We expect the sun to be up. Miracle.

We expect to be in the same state we left our bodies in (or better) when we went to sleep. Miracle.

We expect things to be in order…

ALL THE THINGS,

in order for us to have a decent morning.

Forget the world staying on its axis and in orbit, forget the sun not crashing into us killing everything, forget natural disasters…

We expect our bodies to work “regularly” we expect to execute our “plans” without regard to how so many other things have to be in order for these regular things to happen.

We bypass all of the miracles and dig into our day. Our problems that we take to God for fixing.

Praying for the traffic to move because we are “already late”. Screw all these other people and their stories. Those things need to work out however best benefits our situations.

Someone is at the helm of all of that. All of the expectations of EVERYONE.

Somehow maintain balance, of all of it.

And we scroll past that extensive work.

The masterpiece of an infinitely complicated system that ultimately shows us how to love.

We ignore it.

No double tapping. No acknowledgment for how amazing it is.

We have lowered the bar on appreciation. A lack of gratitude. A lack of respect.

We acknowledge God when we need to. When we get what we want, not having the slightest clue how it REALLY affects our lives. Not knowing if our prayers are best for us, because we are so limited in our perspectives.

Yet, I am quite clear on the disrespect I receive from my “friends and followers” when I pour my heart into a thing and they overlook it to acknowledge some nonsense that a “celebrity” does.

I consider myself a follower of God. God who is my ultimate friend.

THE Friend, and me a follower.

And this is humbling.

I see how I treat God.

And it’s wack.

I know how it feels.

I know what it’s like to give so much of me, and for someone to disrespect it.

And it’s wack.

So I make these insane endeavors now, because it is said, “What great people do, common people will follow.”

Now I know why it’s necessary to spend this much time making a piece of art.

Understanding this human experience.

People see it as greatness.

And it’s all just remixing God’s energy. It ain’t even us.

And I get to tell everyone, first hand that scrolling past ‘this’ is wack.

And most of all, once we get to truly humbly approach the art of living, we can share things that make this human experience make sense.