Making Lonely Art
Recently, I was looking at my art and I noticed that it doesn’t include many people or anything much occurring at all. It’s full of calm and quiet moments, quick shots of dreams and memories. Even when there are people, they’re usually alone, in a space detached. This spurred into the question “is my art lonely?”
A mostly innocent observation that’s taken hold of me as it’s started coloring my art in a different light and has led me onto an interesting train of thought. “Is my art lonely?” Has taken two forms for me; is making art lonely and is my art itself lonely?
In my experience, the creative process can be a lonely one. Despite being someone who enjoys their quiet time, I still find myself losing the line between being alone and being lonely. I wonder if my art has inherited this trait as well. Art is a mirror to the artist, so does it get lonely too?
Creating art requires a sizable intake of silence, which can only come from being alone and without distraction. It sometimes seems silly that you need so much time just to paint a picture. It’s reserving hours of studying, practicing, experimenting—of being alone— for a painting. All of this time and dedication is what makes it precious, any single moment could hold a story within it if you could listen.
In this way, art makes me feel more connected to what’s around me. It calls for me to explore further and feel things closely. I can’t imagine going through life and not picking something up, getting lost in it, and trying to retrace the steps. It seems contradictory that the thing that keeps me so tied up by myself also encourages me to reach further outside. It’s “as above, so below” or maybe “damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”
What would my art think?
I don’t exactly believe that my art is living or conscious, but I like to think that it does have an energy to it. When I imagine that it is lonely, I think that its energy may have stagnated, it’s reduced to not a painting— but only an object that could turn into noise, clutter, or just waste. I used to think that if maybe my art was “useful” and served some sort of function then maybe that wouldn’t happen. But being useful doesn’t guarantee connection and why would I want to shrink my art to somewhere it doesn’t fit?
It would be truly lonely if I tried to make it something it wasn’t, even if it may not shout or do anything particularly incredible. Quiet as it may be, it lives in a world of its own— a magnetic peace that ignites its surroundings with curiosity.
There’s also a third and more difficult question that emerged from my art and loneliness— who’s the audience? Creating art has constructed another world that I can go back and forth between, but where does it exist for others outside of me? It may just all be in my head.
My art does come from inside my head and it could just be left there. However, that could become living alone in a fantasy away from the things that inspired it. Finding a place for my art, once again, it pushes me further. It pushes me to seek out and create these spaces around me where my art does belong without having to scream and shout for it.
The more that I create, the more that the distance between me and the outside closes. I’ll find myself surrounded by what I know and care about, somewhere others could be invited into. The world would become colored by the art I make and the quiet won’t be lonely, it’ll resonate with the things that are important to me.
