I was explaining something to S about frames, and I realized there is something important about my work that I have never really touched on or explained. It would be interesting to know all of your thoughts on it.
None of my works really need a 'frame', all of my works can be displayed on it's own, like a poster. Of course they can all be framed, but the canvases themselves are meant to be touched. No glass needed.
If you are like me, you have spent a lifetime staring at things in books and magazines that you know you can never have. But even as you know this, you still long just to touch it. Feel it. Run your fingers over it, caress it and feel it alive and real in your hands.
Even though you know you can not have it, you wish to hold it, maybe gently touch it to your cheek. If only you could HOLD it. Just once, just for a little while.
Growing up, the pictures I saw that made me feel that way were Rembrandt's. And Michelangelo's. And Botticelli's. And even Picasso's.
If only I could touch them to my face, feel them in my hands... If only... Even if only for a few moments.
It makes me sad to know such fine and beautiful things are usually locked away from us, or literally put beyond our reach. I understand it must be protected and preserved, however, you can never fully and completely appreciate such beauty unless it is real and accessible. To TOUCH IT touches your soul.
And this is precisely the reason I give away more art than I will ever sell. Because I do not just want you to see it, I want you to feel it too. I want you to feel what I feel when someone unexpectedly hands me something so beautiful I can literally FEEL the beauty of it.
I want you to touch my works, because I know for a fact with every fiber of my being, it WILL touch you back. No unfulfilled longing, no distance between you and ART.
And when you touch where I have touched, when you look closely without that horrible distance, when you study my colors or bring it to your cheek, then as an artist, there is no distance between you and I. The art is the thread that connects us both, no matter the distance, no matter the time that has passed.
I know a Michelangelo statue would feel like marble to the touch, but, if I touch it, with love, like the artist who created it, I can feel his hand beneath mine and on that marble for just a moment, Michelangelo and I can touch hands.
But I am sure I will never get that close to one, so my fingers will twitch with an unfulfilled longing, forever.
Art does not have to be that way. It should not be that way. But it is, and that can not be changed.
Unless some crazy kid gets inspired one day and believes art should be free and beauty should be touched.
Soooo. What do you believe? Does touching art change your perception of the art?
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2 comments:
Great question. It reminds me of a visit I made to an archaeological dig in Chester, England. Part of a wall had been exposed and I knelt there in the dirt and touched a stone. And for the next little while I wondered about the young Roman soldiers who built that wall. Were they 13? Or 14? Or much younger when they were first taken from their families, across the sea to build an impenetrable fort in England guarding Roman possessions from the Welsh. Certainly they'd have been the labourers. The ants. I was alone at the time and tears ran down my face. It was an overwhelming moment. I literally had to shake myself to restore my reality.
I hadn't thought of my family in Australia with homesickness till that moment. I thought of those young boys as I thought of my own sons. Far from love. It made me sad.
Is this what you mean?
That is exactly what I mean Woz.
Exactly.
It is almost impossible to touch what they touched, without hearing the echo of their very thoughts.
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