Life has ups and downs of course, and I’ve said plenty of times that art is a great catharsis. I used that catharsis this very morning, for a new digital piece.
I like digital art, in this case more photomanipulation than full, line by line sort of art. My style(s) of art usually has a lot of brush strokes, an illustrative reality so to speak. But sometimes I like to explore the chaos of my mind, and often I choose to combine photographs with brushstrokes, textures, pretty much wherever the art leads.
When I’m working on a piece of art that’s more catharsis than anything, I try to let go and just do art. Let the demons out, so to speak. Being a sufferer of quite violent headaches often (no, not migraines per se, and no, no one can help me; thanks anyway), there are days when I just don’t have the spark to create. I just want to go find a hidey hole somewhere and get away from the pain.
But, that simply can’t happen. I have family life to attend to. I have freelance clients for both art and web development that need their stuff. I occasionally have to run errands, fix things around the house, and so on. So down time doesn’t exist. Which, quite honestly, often makes things worse.
So, I try to do art. It works out great if I can work on an ink, or a traditional painting, even something that needs published. But those activities take concentration, and a focus that I simply don’t have when the old noggin is in peril.
So, two choices: I can give up and go hide in the hole. Or I can fight.
The trick is just letting the brain do art all on its own. No ideas of where it’s going, and no forcing it into some direction. It is time to do pure, unadulterated art for art’s sake, to shake off those demons in my head and get a move on with the things that need to be done.
Sometimes, I end up with a fat lot of mud onscreen. Those are the ones you never get to see.
Sometimes though, it works out quite nicely. Pieces like Winter Holiday and A Violent Reaction, pieces that I’m quite proud of, came out of doing art as catharsis. Today’s piece seems to have worked out nicely as well, so I’m happy to show it to you.
I call it, The Darkness Never Comes, though the story I see for the image is quite different than the title. But that idea is for me, it’s up to you to come up with your own interpretation.
Here’s the new art, and click on it for a larger version.
