Change is inevitable. Without change, there is no growth. Without growth, there is no life. And without life, well, that’s that. My art has changed with time much as my life has. The thoughts, circumstances, people and emotions that inhabited my life at various times also inhabited my art, either explicitly or implicitly. It goes without saying that as the landscapes of my life changed, so would the things I create. To try to make a creative muse last beyond its natural time is futile. When the life is gone from it, so is its utility. And we move on. Change I can accept.
But the art, itself – that which was created – should last forever, right? What was made stands as a testimonial to what was. After all, isn’t that what art is about? Something meant to last beyond the time, place, moment and artist? Except, of course, when it doesn’t.
This weekend was a hard reckoning of this fact. Faced with paintings that have seen too much time and less than perfect conditions, I made the choice to neither fight to keep them as they are, nor to discard them as relics of the past, but to change them into different, new, versions of themselves. While I can embrace change, and the notion of repurposing something worn, but loved, into something useful again, this was no small feat. These paintings were children born from a different me. And while that me no longer exists, she did, as did they, and they were loved. Admitting they have passed their usefulness in their original form—that I allowed them to fall into decay—was hard enough. Taking a knife to them even harder. But it seemed like the last, best way to pay them, and the time they came from, the respect they deserved. Far better than letting them continue down the descent, dusty and unseen, simply because I lacked the courage to do otherwise.
The first of these reincarnations will make its debut soon. While I am pleased with the life I have breathed into it again, I still don’t know quite how I feel about it. Is it merely a shadow of its former self? Or something truly better? Regardless, it was still really hard. And there is more repurposing to be done. Like the first run after weeks of slacking, I dread the discomfort and pain that will come as I am squarely in the middle of it. But I hope that on the other side will be catharsis, and a sense that it was worth it, and that I (and they) am better for it.
