What am I doing?

In my early 20s, I really thought I was the shit.  I'd never heard of Jackson Pollock and I really thought I'd come up with something totally new and different with this whole thrown paint thing.  The very first time I exhibited my work I had a solo show at the East Bridgewater Public Library (in the town I grew up in) and was shocked and dismayed to find that the movement I thought I would spark and the notoriety I assumed I would garner had all played out already- 50 years earlier- for someone else. After about the 9th time that 1st night that I heard someone say "These look a lot like Jackson Pollock," I started to doubt that I really was special at all.

But my work was fundamentally different in so many ways I just kept at it.  I made a point out of bringing it to the next level.  I did tons of solo and group shows around Massachusetts, joined the local Arts Council and started doing painting demonstrations at art festivals all over the state. Eventually I started organizing events on my own, and attending events I wasn't even involved with just to network. Myspace was new then and I blogged there incessantly about my adventures.  I developed a fanbase and momentum.  A couple of times I think I even got a tiny taste of what fame must feel like when I was recognized by strangers in public who were excited to have actually met me, or met women who wanted to sleep with me because they liked my work.

And then something changed a few years ago.  I'm not sure how to define that change, but I've been battling it ever since and trying to find ways to get back to how I was.  The thing is, I think I got tired of the whole thing.  It's a lot of work to insert oneself into the social consciousness, and while I'd convinced myself I was good at it, I just couldn't keep up the effort.  Even with all the support I seemed to have, it was only coming from other artists.  I never sold enough of my art to even come close to living on.  The best money I made independently was when I was asking for donations at the door at art parties I used to throw.  At some point I became so obsessed with figuring out what I could paint that people might actually give me money for that I lost all sense of what sort of ART I actually wanted to do. 

I stopped painting.  Just like that.  It was like I had nothing more to paint about.  For a little while at the end there I was still doing some shows here and there, but I was showing the same old stuff that I'd had on my table for years at that point.  There was nothing new.  So then I stopped doing shows too.  I haven't shown my work publicly in years now.

In fits and starts since then, I've been trying to paint again, but it's only been in the last two years (basically, since I've been with Meghan) that I've been able to tap into that childlike part of me that can allow himself to just explore and play in any kind of comfortable and consistent way.  I prefer to work experimentally, but not scientifically.  I need to find out what's possible but have to avoid hypotheses and other preconceptions.  It's coming back.  I'm finding it again.  Or it's finding me.

I feel like I'm operating in a vacuum sometimes now though.  I've lost touch with so many people over the years.  I'm entirely out of the loop.  My painting experiments are going well, and the work is getting good again, but I'm starting to get antsy- I want to get out there and show this stuff to people, and I want them to like it- and be able to tell me WHY.  I'm getting paranoid that perhaps it's best to keep the work private and operate as though my art-making is simply a hobby just so that I can maintain some sense of honesty and purity in the work.  And not expose myself to criticism.  It's not that a critical word is in itself unbearable.  I often crave a good honest critique.  The problem is that that criticism can have a destabilizing effect on the headspace I need intact to create new work afterwards. So I've been afraid to make the leap and get out there. 

I think I've been placing an inordinate amount of blame for the whole thing on my job.  My schedule there (which I can't seem to get them to change) is Monday through Friday (thankfully- this lets me see my son on weekends), but from 2pm to 10:30pm, so it's basically impossible to get out there and do art openings and self-curated shows, or go to the right parties, or any of that stuff.  But the internet has changed everything.  If I can get enough people interested in my work online to make the investment viable and logical, I want to set up a marketplace where people can order prints of my work.  I want to finally assemble a proper portfolio to submit to real galleries.  But I need to know that there are people out there who want the work to be available.

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And if you like what you see, please let me know.  I really need some encouragement right now.  If the comment box won't work, email me at thearttrials@gmail.com.  Please.