Lonely Mind

In The Truman Show, the main character liberates himself from the shackles of the mundane by drawing on the power of his independent thinking. It’s such a romantic premise, who couldn’t love it!

As an artist, I wonder about how independent my thinking is all the time. I struggle with an (un-independent) need to feel unique and authentic and recognized as such on one hand; and a desire to meet the potential of art in my own terms on the other.

All the art work I love seems to share a certain will-do-it-despite-it-all spirit. I’m not saying certain risks didn’t fill the artists with ambivalence. But, the work works because it is its own.

But, what are you going to do. Go into the studio and say, “today, I will make something to the beat of my own drum?” Hogwash. It doesn’t work like that.

Update on the definition of emerging status: Now that I will be 35, I think I will simply say that I’m an artist. I’m dropping the emerging, even though my cv classifies me in that category.