Recently I was playing hide and seek with my 16 month - old grandson.  I suddenly realized that he had stopped looking for me and had moved on to other things.  For a moment, I felt foolish.  It’s quite sad when you are hiding and no one is seeking you!

 

That’s a pretty good analogy for being an artist.  You can create wonderful art, but if no one is seeking you, you can feel pretty foolish. 

 

Creating art has to be satisfying to ourselves, first.   Following our bliss, expressing our feelings and moving toward mastery, these are the prime motivations for art.

 

I have come to realize that art is an interactive thing.  In creating art, you are setting up a dialogue with other people.   After satisfying the creative urge, you need an audience.

 

I recently wrapped up my solo show, A Tapestry of Movement, at the ArtCenter Manatee.   At the opening, people were looking at my paintings, talking about them, asking questions and experiencing the effect of a gallery full of art on the theme of figures in motion.

 

I couldn’t have asked for a better example of the dialogue between the artist and the public.

 

The show told a story of how a long-term project developed.  How a painting done forty years ago, before I knew it was going to be a series, contained many elements of my concept.  The flattened space with people moving along the picture plane, the intersection of realism with abstraction, were contained in Essex Street Rhythms. 

 

People seemed to be very interested in the progression from the early examples to the images that were painted recently.  Some of those at the show discussed the feeling of big cities, the setting for many of my paintings.  “there’s a vibrant energy there and you captured it”, someone said.

 

A friend who had lived in New York City knew about the clothing shops around Essex Street.  She had shopped for bargains in those stores, left over from the tenement workshops of the 19^th century.  We talked about the transitory aspect of the city, how a way of life lived on now only in memories and paintings.

 

Others considered the ballet paintings.  A few had been dancers in their youth and reflected on their dancing days.  I entered the world of ballet as an observer, inspired by the grace and athleticism of the dancers.  They knew it from the inside and were intrigued by how I had broken dance movements into parts, then recombined them like frames from a movie.

 

One friend closely examined Tapestry 2, looking at the way the paint was applied.  We had a fascinating conversation about how an artist knows when a painting is done.   Sometimes it’s finished when things are left undone.  The effect of all this feedback left me buzzing with stimulation.

 

Though the exhibition spanned a period of forty years, in fact, most of the 22 paintings were painted very recently.  Having to work toward a show for six months was a powerful motivator to keep me painting and focused on a theme.

 

Would I have created all those paintings without the prospect of exhibiting them?  that’s doubtful.  I would have continued working, but not as focused on a theme. 

 

I created Essex Street Rhythms, in 1979, when I was still new to illustration.  I didn’t expect the canvas to be seen by many people, because I had nowhere to show it.  It leaned against various walls, being moved from house to house, never even being framed or hung on a wall.

 

 

At the time I was painting for myself, having failed to find a gallery for my work.  The lack of an audience had the effect of sapping the art of its meaning.  I moved from idea to idea without developing any one thing to its potential. What did it matter, if no one would see it?

 

Ironically, the work I was doing for illustration was completely directed at an audience. That art had a purpose, to sell mass market paperback books.  Hundreds of thousands of paperback books, with my art on their covers, were being read every day.

 

As my paintings for book covers brought me notoriety, the work flourished.  I was challenged to grab potential readers, topping my previous achievements and seeing how far I could push the genre.  I had an exhilarating feeling of connection.

 

Simultaneously, my personal work developed in darkness, away from the public.  It was a long series of interesting, even beautiful experiments that no one saw.  I began to understand what needed to be done.

 

My work had to be seen by the public!  

 

In 2006 I moved to Florida and began a series of paintings focused on the local scenery.  I also began showing in the Dabbert Gallery in Sarasota.  This proved to be the missing ingredient, having an audience.

 

Since then, I have expanded to other galleries around the country.  I have had numerous solo shows and won awards and recognition.   Now, I see the relationship with my public as a vital part of what I do.  Art cannot thrive in a vacuum.   It must be nourished by exposure to the world of people.  

 

I would even go further and say that my relationship with the audience is another art form, with its own media and disciplines.  It encourages me to push beyond the boundaries of my studio walls, to see the world as a large canvas of infinite possibilities.