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page 6
Stone Riley
Greybeard's Rant page 6
(my real artist's statement)
(C) 2005 by Stone Riley
It is of course infuriating that the art trade is now in one of its frequent periods of clinging to outmoded style when I am trying to sell pictures. But what the hell. Screw 'em. A serious painter's situation, in some respects, is actually extremely good right now.
For one thing, we get to start from nothing. Doing better work than Warhol can't be hard. With our predecessors having so abstained from taking painting seriously, it falls on us to look all basic questions in the eye and exercise our judgment on the purposes and nature of this art. Sweet. Rare opportunity. Any contribution you may make is welcome. Of course we'll fundamentally reach the same conclusions serious artists always reach in any medium: The thing to do is tell true stories. You do it by conversing with the audience. Okay. But we get to mold the stories and the metaphors, indeed to build the language.
So here's my second point of optimism: Remember back when African masks hit the European scene? Picasso painted his Demoiselles and all of that. Or how imported painted Japanese prints taught color to Van Gogh? Or how rediscovering old Egyptian stuff transformed the mid-19th century depiction of grace? Or have you heard about the old Roman marble torso, dug up in the Vatican, which Michelangelo sat and studied while doing sketches for that ceiling? You can now go down to the local bookstore, if you've got the cash, and stock up on excellent photos of any of that stuff. Or watch your local museum calendar for a traveling exhibit of Mesoamerican artifacts. Or if your budget's tight and you find yourself in a little hamlet without a ride, just surf the web. Nowadays we have the whole world's visual metaphors from which to craft our own. We're rich, my friend. Fill your eyes.
The same goes too for stories. You want a larger viewpoint on your family strife? Dip into Sophocles and sketch a scene. You want some clear rhythm of ideas in your head to lay out that symbolic landscape? Read "Black Elk Speaks". You want a confrontation of fear and hope? Try the final chapters of "Inanna, Queen Of Heaven And Of Earth". You want journey into mystery? "The Mabinogion". You want some Tao teaching stories for descriptions of the glistening flow of time? You want Rumi's poems of mystic love from which to visualize a gesture of your brush? You've got it, pal. Browse bookstore shelves or else the web. Ask a librarian. We are citizens of the mythic Earth. Read!!
(continued)
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