You Know What You Should Do.....?

Sunflower II, Mixed Media Painting, ©2009 Jeane Vogel, 16x16

Is there a connection between artists being told what to do and the banality of most art seen in public places in the US? Bear with me here.

The connection might be called Unsolicited Advice.

I seem to get it all the time. Strangers walk into my studio, look around. "You know what you should do..." Then it begins.

A fellow artist walks into my studio. "You know what you should be doing ...?" No, you do that. That suggestion has nothing to do with my work.

I'm not saying that I don't like input and advice. In fact, I often ask for it and get terrific responses. Sometimes I don't like the suggestion, but it might give me pause and force me to understand why I'm not heeding it. (As an aside, if I need my ego fed, I ask advice from my husband. He seems to think everything I do is wonderful. How cool is that?)

What I truly don't understand is why do people insist on telling me what I should be doing. Do I look incompetent? Do I seem confused or aimless? Did I ask for advice? Am I your student?

Unsolicited Advice. It makes you question your judgment, censor your thoughts, keep your work safe.

Or, are you telling me what art to produce because you don't like my work? Don't understand it? It's not what you expect? Ok. Tell me that instead.

A Buddhist friend tells me that I get so much unsolicited advice because I'm always giving it. Well, that should stop, shouldn't it? OK, I'll work on that, but there's something more.

Do we really want all art to look alike? Are we so narrow or limited or lazy or stupid that we have to be spoon fed only paintings of little girls holding a bouquet, or a sailboat on the sea, or a field of sunflowers. I've created art with all these things, but this is all we can do? Can't we create something that forces a viewer to spend more than 5 seconds with it before moving on?

Art should spark a conversation, link to another idea, inspire an action, even just solicit a smile. I'm not saying that every work produced has to be important or controversial or political. Our art should not just fade into the wall.

Take a look around at your bank, your hotel lobby, your dentist's office. Do you notice the art? If not, ask why it's there. I don't think we really want everything the same. We don't want to be told what we should be doing.

Death of a Film -- Part II

Sunflower, Mixed Media Painting/Photography, 30x30, $750 SOLD

People are aghast when they learn that my Polaroid film has been discontinued. The hand-altered Polaroids are popular and they mourn the loss of new images. So do I. There are five packs of film in my fridge right now. That's it. The film on eBay hasn't been handled properly, I've found, and it's damaged. I'm not buying more.

"So what will you do?" they ask. "Are you out of business?"

A one-trick pony is out of business. An artist moves on.

I have several bodies of photographic work -- traditional color, traditional black & white, the new Infrareds (that I LOVE!) My favorite still is the Polaroids. They are interpretive and organic and fluid and emotive. Nothing else does that.

Except painting.

So that's where I'm going. This year I've starting extending the image of the finished Polaroid onto the mat. I'm using soft pastels, which are so tactile and expressive that they match the mood of the original photograph perfectly.

I was at the Geneva (IL) Fine Art Fair this weekend. It's a great show with some of the best artists in the country. The level of work here is exceptional. For the first time I showed a 30x30 Sunflower that I just completed. Maybe I priced it too low, but it sold within the first hour! The patron wanted others to see it and asked if she could leave it in my booth until Sunday. Sure!

Three other patrons were upset that they couldn't have it! They can commission one!

I love the Sunflower, but my favorite is Dragon in the Clouds, below, finished just hours before I left for the show.

This body of work has a piece of my soul and I'm not letting it fade away. It's getting a new life as mixed media painting.

A Dragon in the Clouds, Mixed Media Painting, 16x16, $395, (framed)