Eye of the Artist

Photo Courtesy of Doris Loes

Artistic talent can come dancing out of anywhere. It might be paints, computer keys, string instruments, camera lenses, brass instruments, the visual eye, and a myriad of other creative tools. The glue that holds it all together is one’s imagination.

Photo courtesy of Sharon LaComb

How is a painter able to come up with such a wide variety of divergent and different kinds of images? It’s as if their creative mind is responding to impulses from the brain that then collectively captures those fleeting images on canvas. As the neurons go, so follow the paints. For those of us who aren’t painters, it seems like a miracle that such images can speak to so many in such a different visual languages.

Photo courtesy of Sharon LaComb

All of which begs the question beyond ‘how do they do that?’ to encompass a more probing inquiry about the mental composition of the artists themselves. One question not often addressed is about creativity and the mental workings of an artist. That is; is there a border/boundary between insanity and sanity? Or is it a marriage of equals instead?

In other words, do you have to be just a little bit crazy to be able to come up with the creative impulses that reveal themselves in art and word and song? Most folks would agree that great artists and even those of a lesser stature are different from you and I. For many, a normal existence (paint your own definition here) is beyond their comprehension. Theirs’s has never been a nine to five routine and the normal boundaries of style and sense and same just isn’t in the cards for them.

Bianca Bosker in her book ‘Get the Picture’ describes her dealings with artists and art gallery owners in New York city. She describes it as ‘a mind-bending journey among inspired artists and obsessed art fiends.’ It’s a world within another world of money and class status and façade-making. Image is everything and personal artistic flavors are often dictated by current trends, tastes and the economy.

I’ve never been comfortable with paint brush in hand. Mine is a more cerebral journey wrapped in vivid images, imaginative ramblings, and characters I can fall in love with even if it might be a love-hate relationship. The written word wrapped in the form of novels, plays and movies seems to fit my personality better. Children’s books like ‘Waleed’ and ‘Sweetpea and the Gang’ only came about because I found an artist to create what my mind had imagined. Storytelling is at the heart of every artistic venture I take. Even song-writing fits comfortably into that category.

But where does that kind of creativity come from? Two of my most inspiring artists; Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen have both said “If I knew where those songs came from, I’d go back there again in a heartbeat.”

While practicing for my Q & A after the presentation of ‘Widow’s Waltz’ I was asked where my ideas come from. My initial ‘honest’ answer was that I don’t know. But my friend would have none of it. “No, Denis, you can’t say that even if it’s the truth,” He cajoled me. “You must give them something they can hold on to.” So, I decided I’d tell them that I’d done a lot of research about older single gay men and their struggles and found it good story-material. While that’s true, the idea was one that had been baking in my brain for a very long time. Why it rose and grew a crust at that time is anyone’s guess?

I truly have no idea where the images and ideas come from? Perusing my tablet each morning certainly doesn’t hurt in terms of filling my brain with a ton of tiny tidbits of silly, interesting, worthless, fascinating snippets of life from which to extract a story idea sometime in the future.

I guess I’ll continue operating that way down my road of story-telling and if that road ends sometime in the future, there are always off-road trails to trace. What can I say; that’s what I do, following trails and finding tales to tell.