I experimented the other day with painting what I don’t know. It wasn’t as fulfilling as I’d hoped. I was really just journaling, the pieces were mostly too personal to share, and since love was the topic of my exploration I felt I was setting myself up to feel ingenuine, as if relationships were just source material for my artistic explorations. Journaling is always useful, but it isn't the thread of consistency I thought I needed to create a meaningful body of work right now.
It was a very useful experience in that it disengaged my notion of needing to disseminate a grand truth or save the world through art. I have worked hard to overcome that desire; to be humble and receptive, but the need to do something obviously helpful has gnawed at me the whole time. Somehow painting questions instead of answers created enough space to finally see through it and the academic pressure to do something unique and conceptually interesting. It makes me really uptight to feel like I need to know what I am making art about before I make it. So instead of painting about love itself, I am just going to paint what I love and let the pursuit form its own content.
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