Accepting Myself as Numerous

Dear Reader,

Poet John Ashbery may have been directing his advice toward poets about mixing various language and tones of voice in their work: “Rather than be pure, accept yourself as numerous.” He was famous for poetry that did just that, weirdly, surreally, and majestically. I end my artist statement with the Ashbery quotation, adding that I believed he was also instructing me as a painter. I wrote my statement over two decades ago, and it still holds true for me today. However, it still causes confusion in viewers’ perceptions of my work.

An August visit to a gallery that carries my work is the most recent example. The owner told me I had just missed a person visiting from Los Angeles who had shown interest in a collage of mine. He seemed intrigued and even smitten with the piece. Ever the philosopher, the owner asked me, “With the hundreds of pieces of art in the gallery, what makes someone focus on one work?” I just shook my head.

“Six on One”

As a long-time collector of other artists’ work, my answer should have been, “You see it and cannot live without it.” Another explanation is that it was an instance of “coup de foudre” – literally, a thunderclap – figuratively, love at first sight. My husband and I just purchased our 77th thunderclap, a small oil painting of pears by Steve Bowersock. It, like my collage, was displayed in a tucked-away corner of a gallery but caught my eye and heart.

The owner told the visitor about me, directing him to two other pieces of mine in the main gallery. They were ink and transfer artworks from a series, published in The little O, the earth: Travel Journals, Art & Poems (2015).

“Travel-Iceland”

“Travel-Ireland”

The man’s immediate reaction: “These look as if they were done by a different artist!” After buying a small piece by another artist, he left.

Even though the scenario was not new, I gave my head another shake and said lamely, “I do what I do.”

That is not quite the end of the story. In another example of “coup de foudre,” precisely three weeks later, the visitor contacted the owner and asked him to ship “Six on One” to Los Angeles.

This might be a way of saying that, like falling in love with anyone or anything, it’s not a three-way event (artist-artwork-viewer), it’s between two entities: viewer-artwork. If art is about love, what has been or will be created by an artist, in one style or suspiciously numerous, cannot be part of the equation. At least as far as I am concerned.