At the end of a long day...

Well. The interview with Philly Joe went okay... Still I came away not entirely satisfied.  I felt the fundamental thing I'd like to get across was maybe lost in the cross-talk. Maybe teachers always feel a conflict between a presentation and a conversation... in any case here's the thought.

Art is Art. What you think art is, or what I think it is is not so important. The point is, we can both agree it exists. That said, when we encounter art in the gallery space, museum or on the street, in a very real way  it doesn't matter who made it. The encounter need not be mediated by personal knowledge of the artist, or by what anyone else thinks. We meet the being, the stranger, the presence in the frame or on the stage. And we respond. Not to the history. Not to the back story. (at least not immediately)

We respond to materality. To presence and that aesthetic response connects us strongly to the imaginal realm, the place where dreams are cast and cracked from molds white hot. The place where difficulties become for the moment transparent. Heaviness floats. Time pauses. At it's best, the encounter is visceral, it takes our breath, changes the very internal rhythms by which we walk and talk. It breaks us open, it reveals the hidden, even as it bandages the wound. Yes. Art does that.

Persons who live with mental illness live with two sets of constraints. Those placed upon them by society, and symptomology, and those they place upon themselves. The answer to fear is control, and many people find, by diminishing their lives, taking fewer risks, allowing less unknowns, symptoms fade.  But this is not a strategy for recovery or vigor.

Art, when it's real, is not small. It will not be made small. It won't be polite, restrained, contained. It's a trouble maker, a random stranger, an unpredictable outcome, a look into the void, into the chaos of unfolding possibility. And so, it is the perfect antedote, for a life of constraint, self-imposed, or not...

David Webb- Dinnertime at the Oaks -Acrylic on Canvas

The art in Recovering the Artist isn't interesting because of who made it. It's interesting because it is art. It exists purely for the sensuous encounter, it rattles our cages, tickles our funny bones, raises our pulse rate, breaks open those deep places, just as it did for the artist in the making.

I feel better. How about you?

Recovering the Artist opens Friday November 4th at The Martha Pace Swift Gallery. For information/ or directions, visit the website.

Rewnewed Dorafshan show to dazzle once more Friday Night Liberty


A renewed show awaits viewers Friday October 7th, at Liberty Station's gallery crawl. Shahla has provided some exciting new works to grace our walls for the opening, and the artist will be present for the opening. Several new paintings have been added since the original installation...can you find them all?  

Window- Acrylic on Canvas 2011
c Shahla Dorafshan all rights reserved

My latest love is this new work, "Window." Finished just this week (9/22/11), it bears all the hallmarks of Dorafshan's  best work. Direct, almost confrontational composition for one... The dark depths of the right side of the canvas seem to push the figure toward the viewer, while the strong light  of the left side returns spaciousness to the pose. And as to the figure herself, she exudes a calm energy;
she is not sitting, or posing, but waiting, as if about to rise at the next moment .  Her expression is enigmatic, the slightest of smiles upon her lips, like the one that leads to tears. Her gaze is unfocused- perhaps bearing witness to some half-concealed thought... A bittersweet memory? A secret sorrow?  Come ask her yourself...

This month's show is expected to be well attended, with its sponsorship by the San Diego Union Tribune, which will be printing a "passport" of sorts, to be stamped at each gallery. Completed passports will qualify gallery-goers for a prize drawing at night's end.