Untitled, mixed media on paper, 2007What is the meaning of doing art for you?
Katherine, thanks for asking me to participate in your project,which I think is an amazing idea!
To answer the question you’re posing, I feel that I have absolutely no control over making my art. It is a complete necessity to my psyche. To make art is the same as
deciding to breathe, eat, or walk. If I were not able to do it, or if the ability to do it was taken away from me because of physical impairments, it would be as if you’d
cut off my arms or legs. I’d be a useless engine. People might come visit me, but life wouldn’t be meaningful anymore.
I am part of my art. You could say I’m a slave to it, but I don’t see it that way. I believe it’s a blessing that’s been given to me. My attitude is that it’s part of the higher goals I try to manifest in my life: peace, tolerance, understanding, hope, and love. I channel those things through my perception of art and the message it brings to me and others, to either be loved, scorned, or disregarded.
I am blessed every day to get up and create art. Nobody has to wake me up to tell me to go to my studio. People ask what I do for my vacation, and I say, “I’m always on vacation, because I’m making art. It means everything to me. It makes my life a great journey and pilgrimage.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your blog. I’d also like to invite you and your readers to look at my blog, www.mattlamb.org/blog.
Up, up, and away,Matt
11 comments:
Thank you for the introducion to this artist with an attitude of love for his art and the process.
good morning Katherine - & Matt - I'm familiar with Matt's work through the outsider mag, Raw Vision - love the passion in your answer Matt!
Not being able to create one's art....life would be meaningless. I relate so well to Matt's answer and love the painting.
Leslie his blog is a lot of fun, his writings are very entertaining and the man who maintains the blog with him is Richard Speer art critic for the Willamette Week in Portland OR. They are both extremely entertaining and creative men.
Jeane good morning to you. ditto what i said to Leslie. Check out Matt's blog.
Robyn thank goodness we artistists feel this way because I don't know if we would do it otherwise and the world would be a very meaningless place without art.
J'aime beaucoup cette association de couleurs.
Quand j'étais jeune, je peignais ainsi sur mes jeans, j'adorais ça !
J'aime ton art, il me donne une belle énergie, j'y suis sensible...
Kisses from France,
Tatieva
Thank you Tatieva for your visit. Matt is a wonder isn't he!
Thank you for the Matt Lamb link. His ideas and work are real treasures!
I couldn't agree with you more Dianna. He has a fabulous blog to follow, full of his wonderfully unique views of life and art.
Dear Katherine,
Thank you for asking me to do the statement on why people do art, and thank you to the people who commented!
I really believe as artists we must all work together for the common good. Artists are given great liberty to articulate things that sometimes we know a lot about and other times we don’t know anything about. The knitting together of our common ideas and conflicting ideas, I think, puts a little spice into the world without becoming a forum for people who think they’ve been elected into an office or charged with changing somebody’s mind or politicizing everything that comes down the hatch.
Really, to take an artistic view of the world is somewhat quirky, but I think the world needs quirkiness. We can get a lot of axioms and rules and regulations and “Stop” and “Go” signs. But I think we need some “I don’t know,” signs, “I’m not sure,” “Maybe yes, maybe no,” “I love it,” or “I don’t give a shit” signs, and know that those are all acceptable ideas, along with the possibility that there may be other routes and ways of looking at the world.
As an artist we can look at a black dot on a white canvas and also a Balinese carving, which has hundreds or even thousands of figures crammed into every last inch, and call both of those art. If we could only do that in life, we would have a much more peaceful world.
Thank you for letting me participate and share ideas with your blog!
Matt
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