I am very excited that all the art is now set up at the Keokuk Art Center. It was an odd feeling to drive the distance in the rickety van, with all the paintings carefully cushioned and stacked. So much time and effort that was sitting in just one place (actually rolling along) and somehow vulnerable?
It isn't that often that we get to sit with a bit of "what we have done in life" in one place. With music, making an album or recording a song, so much of that performance is second hand. You have the CD or the show, which, even if it is recorded is never the same as that live performance. The ritual occurs and the ceremony is soon over for the ages.
With painting and drawing, the emotion is trapped, as if in amber. The emotional quality of the picture, prepared, painted and finally on the wall is the final product. You get to look not only at the brush strokes, the points, scrapes and yes, even erasing, but the soul-statement that is made by the artist.
That is why Michelangelo's statue of David, when I finally got to see it was so stunning to me. The very size of the statue, the use of his scale versus the light. Trapped forever for the beholder.
Don't get me wrong, recording has come a long way and we now can finally hear the artist sing what she wanted us to hear. Or we can at least see the artist trapped on a very rudimentary canvas that we call HD.
Painting and drawing is high tech compared to the other arts. When you think about it, the cave dwellers who painted deep in the recesses of those caves in France, Africa and Spain already had refined the art. It's been around for longer than the other arts in the sense that is has been recorded longer. That "life's work" of the unknown artist in Lascaux as compelling as the minute she finished it.