Artistic Reason, Why I Recreate Them

Dogs, sheep, birds, grasses, …I draw them because they are constant and familiar in my life. I draw them to bring them to attention; to remember and recapture. To see them through a different lens. I draw them to feel what I missed when I saw them in person and let slip the moment.

It it no surprise that the dogs garner this much depth and attention, given each and everyone of my days are spent with dogs at my side in work and in companionship, but even the sheep pull strong on my curiosity and what can I say of this prairie that binds us together. This land has tugged at my heart from the moment it realized it had a human that wanted – needed – to grow here. So yes, I make artwork of them all.

It is a great fortune to experience subjects so intricately that they pull you along in the flesh and in the creative. On the flip side however, is how deeply inadequate you will feel about any portrayal, written or visual, you make of such subjects. Or how the act of drawing subjects whose being-ness is so entwined with yours will flood you with all the ways you moved through life with your mind made up and your senses closed. In creating art of the subject that has captured you, you will have to re-capture yourself and decide what to do with the humanness you find. And this re-capturing is the core artistic reason for showing up each day to create, regardless of the work getting anywhere or going nowhere.

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This Period of Learning To Paint

For the past several months I have been on a learning journey with watercolor and gouache. I never anticipated working with a paint brush in hand but here I am being thoroughly challenged by it and waking up each day wanting to do more of it. I have absolutely loved this period of learning to paint, of feeling new frustration and new challenges and of occasionally rising to meet them. Painting lets me create in a more fluid and flexible manner than needle felting. While rush and hurry are not my goals, seeing notable progress on a piece is certainly satisfying.

Watercolor on paper 5 x 7″

For the last couple years I have been wishing away the work load of looking after the real sheep and the real dogs in order to sit still and create artwork of them. Yet doing all the leg work a farm requires and being immersed in daily experiences with the animals fuels the desire to create as much artwork of these subjects as can be fit into the remainder of life. The worry of wasting time and not being able to create fast enough is real and distinct.

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Does Your Why Hold Strong?

At an adjudicated art show I attended a few years back the adjudicator offered a piece of advice that stuck with me – good art comes about from knowing your why; I would add that so does good farming. Why you create the particular work you create, why you gravitate to those subjects or that process. Are your intangible reasons powerful enough to see you through the lack of reward? Are they powerful enough to show up in your work? If no one witnesses your creations or your process does your why still hold strong?

If an artist knows their why they will always figure out the how. As long as our why’s are important to us there is importance in honouring them, there is importance in continuing even when the results we want from life are not self-evident. Upon hearing it this advice fell into place for me just as the three chosen words Wool, Stone & Prairie did years ago. I remember that the advice gave me great hope; it gave me hope because I knew my why. And today my why is still holding strong – there is that at least. Even with a diminished flock of sheep and fewer dogs, and the occasional slow down of creativity while I fumble with learning new things, my why holds.

I did this drawing awhile back and then ruined it when trying to mount it to a wood panel. Your why also has to carry you through the mistakes, the errors and the losses. It has to be your reason to show up and create when, creatively speaking, nothing seems to be flowing or going your way.

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