What is left when you've done everything else? Tricks. Tricks.

Sometimes, when I have a very specific and urgent idea for a piece but not a clue how to translate it onto board, I will hold modeling clay in my hands and mindlessly knead it while staring out the window. It works most often than not. A trick a professor taught me years ago. One I believe a lot of painters use.

And now with writing. I will think about a very specific and urgent idea I want to explain but not have a clue how to articulate it. And so, I will write something of distant relation. A rant or an anecdote or a simple paragraph. It has been working most often than not.

Yesterday morning I wrote a short blog about pretension - of mine and that of others calling themselves artists. And it was honest but it was not the main idea that has been beating me over the head each morning when I wake up.

That main idea is this: I have been begging the universe for nearly a year to help me discover art that floors me. That blows my mind. Confuses me. Horrifies and mystifies me. Makes me disagree. But eventually causes me to clench my fists with jealous anger - "Why didn't I ever think of that?!" And no. I couldn't find it. I've seen some lovely paintings demonstrating considerable skill and discipline. Plenty of amazing pieces that have moved me and plenty that have not. Some new takes on old ideas. Some new ideas executed in old ways. I have not been floored. (And I certainly have not been flooring anyone myself.)

And I realized, even from the beginning, that the only art capable of flooring me would be that which spoke to my selfish and immediate interest. Of discovering the purest (or most acceptable) form of manipulation of reality and figuring out how to mock that in an absurd way. Not to be a pretentious bitch - just because it happens to interest me right now. And it doesn't make sense. But it does.

The idea that no matter your acute expertise in Photoshop, even an untrained eye responds negatively to an altered photo. But, wait, even a unaltered photograph alters reality. Even if taken with a spotless lens in the bright sunlight. What you see through a lens is not really real. There are too many copies involved and with each one, "real" things are lost and "false" things are gained. The film itself is not capable of retaining the integrity of the initial image. The photographer is biased based on past experience when developing the film - takes license to dodge and burn and add on a few extra seconds under the light. The paper. Chemicals. The clean water rinse. Altering, altering, altering. And digital photos - pixels, RGB, display monitors. What I see on my screen and what you see on yours is wildly different.

And we all know this. And we all know that we are always altering reality. Obviously on a large scale with construction and traffic and the digestion of animal flesh. But even on a small scale by placing our feet on blades of grass. Inevitable - and grossly interesting to me now. Because what is reality? Is it the initial image your brain receives or is it the final photo on paper or computer screen? Can an infinite number of absolute realities spring from one moment? Not a new concept at all - it's been explored in so many ways for so many decades.

So why am I just obsessing over this now when The Matrix is so passe? Fuck, I don't know. Maybe I've tired of the new Urban Outfitters at Somerset. But I think it is more: Throughout the past few years I have become very good at fooling myself (even while quite aware that I am doing so and actually intending to do so.) Convincing myself of things that are not real. But, I think, if they are real to me, then they are real. And it is easier for me to believe in the ridiculous than it is the plain truth. I like the absurdist view better. I understand it more easily. The closest thing to reality bores the shit out of me. But not everyone is like me. It seems a lot of us want the closest thing to reality - even in art. Is it really more right to believe in something that is slightly askew than wildly embellished? What, exactly, is the difference if neither is real? No one remembers a fight with a partner the way it really was. They each have their own very different version of reality. And neither is really real so why is one usually more believable than the other when each are told to a third party? The one you believe tends to be the one without "obvious" embellishments. Yet they are both embellished. So both should be rejected.

So, similarly, why is a photo of plain 'ol me sitting on my couch well received on MySpace, but a collage of a dozen me's in black and white, high contrast, gaussian blur ill received? Why do people inherently reject that wildly embellished photo, yet accept me in my living-room, moles, smeared eye makeup and all? Why when the couch photo isn't "reality" at all, either? My natural haircolor is strawberry blonde, and my eyelashes are white rather than black and I'm certain I probably had makeup on to cover dark circles - and I use Collagen cream to correct fine lines. And I have a few capped teeth. So - not even close to reality, really.)

So then, also this - if we subconsciously reject digital photo manipulation but accept "organic" manipulation, how will we respond to a photo that looks digitally manipulated but is not? What if we use "real" items like gauze and vaseline and even spit (can you get more organic than that?) to manipulate the image of reality before it passes through the lens? Are these items less real than the camera itself? No. Are they more "real" than adjusting levels, saturation and brightness/contrast in Photoshop? I don't know. The art that explains that is the art that will floor me.

And it doesn't make sense. But it does. Because Saturday evening I discovered a book that did not answer, but asked the very questions I have been trying to ask if only my scattered brain could articulate. It included a large collection of photographs that trick you into believing they've been altered in a very primitive retouching program when they have not. And others that look representational - but have actually been severely doctored. Some that look so unbelievably flat and dull that you assume they've been taken under flourescent lighting - yet they've been taken outside in midday with no filters or additional lighting. And each one of them was equally disturbing to me, but none were to Claire (who has not been conditioned to deny the unreal yet.) And only the ones that look digitally altered (but weren't) were disturbing to my mother and sister and brother-in-law.

Finally. This book, it floored me. Confused me. Threw me down a flight of stairs. Made me feel completely incapable of understanding anything. And I am so happy for it. And I want to put it away before I've gone mad. And before it convinces me that "purists" have nothing important to say. Before I begin constructing high contrast bodysuit filters to wear to the grocery store and attempting to pixelate my flesh as a social experiment. (With what purpose, I've still no clue.)

(And this is just my own opinion at the moment of purists - and it may very well change by the time I fill my coffee cup again - but I am beginning to see (when I wasn't really able to before) what a friend of mine told me years ago. I was ignorantly insulting the work of an artist who painted a canvas black - you know the one. I claimed his work was taking up room in galleries where real art should be displayed. And my friend calmly told me he believed these modernists were showing a natural progression with this work. They had made their way through formal training, painted in the classical sense for years, mastered their discipline, and were now using their medium to explore IDEAS. That's what accomplished artists paint - IDEAS. And I'm beginning to see now that purist rules and prohibitions are meant for students - to keep their noses to the grindstone. To learn the basics of aesthetics and to practice, practice, practice what will please the masses so that years from now they will be given respect when they present a red square on an otherwise blank canvas. Much like Picasso earning respect for his Cubist work only because he was a brilliant representational painter first. You must master your discipline BEFORE you go getting ideas. BEFORE you use your work to express those ideas. And I realize now that I haven't even begun to really study the basics and I've gone and gotten ideas.)