It is hard to describe the sense of shame I feel when I carry one of my Art Works down the main street of my small town. I wonder in quiet thoughts to myself, (as someone who will never, and never wants to be a parent) is this the same sort of shame that a parent feels as they escort a misbehaving child away from the chaos they've unleashed upon the world?
The same sun shines down on me. The same one that let me navigate and capture the images that are distilled into a finished piece. It's a Tuesday. The exhibition opens on Friday. I drop it off at the Exhibition Venue, and say goodbye to a frame I'll see again in seventy two hours.
A frame that many other people will see again in seventy hours. I frame that I will see them seeing, and hope that my creation will not be lost upon the shores of their Friday afternoon.
I park in the same spot. This time, the sun is weaker, and I'm wearing a button up shirt and much nicer pants. It is Friday. I want to make a nice impression on people. I've had a busy day. The gym, the groceries, the hardware store, the front garden. My back hurts. My quadriceps spasm in complaint at being forced to walk unencumbered down the main street.
I'm early. I'm always early. I like being early. It gives me time to think.
I sit, quiet, and meet one of the other artists. We walk up the stairs. I almost immediately fall up them. Bloody legs. Bloody back. We look at the art work. We speak in hushed tones of our passions. Others arrive and join us.
We stand at the back of the room, listening with interest and making quiet introductions of one another as more of our kind arrive.
They talk of the history of place, I am anxious that Art has no place.
I shake a new hand, and we get a mention. It isn't the last hand I'll shake this night.
The doors are thrown open, and it is "party time". There's friends, there's wine (no thank you, for me, I'm no longer a drinker) - and the hushed tones erupt into the exact sort of conversation you'd expect for a Friday afternoon.
But this one is different. There's people in the room, and they're more than the sum of their labels and post-nominals, if only I could remember mine. The sun is still bright, hanging around as an unwelcome guest in the Western sky, forcing people to dance around in tight circles as they mingle from group to group. Shielding their eye contact from sun's invasion through the large westerly window.
I see old friends, I see strangers. I make new conversations with new people and think, that perhaps, I have made new friends. My work hangs on the wall. I encourage people to interact with it. I chat with them. They are fascinated by the idea.
For the majority, and for myself, sadly, Art is never a commercially viable exercise. Artists are so rarely paid for work that is commissioned for an event or for a show, and that's a shame, because Art, like performance, presenting, programming, or pouring someone a drink is work.
Hard work. It is hard work because it explores big, grand, philosophical ideas that have swum around in the oceans that smash their waves against my neural matter and cognition again and again. They're ideas that are stuck in the splendour of an unfathomable swell, and they long to be unfurled onto the land, where they can be claimed and hung upon a wall, writhing with meaning.
I suggest, not verbally, but in size small font that the work can generate an income, by stating "Pay the Artist". I refer to me, but there are so many others like me.
I speak with another, and they explain how they spend every moment away from their real work, or sleep working on their craft. They practice and yearn for the moments of quiet solitude and lament that they do not fear the joy of their flow state more. They defend their time fiercely and are sad that they must leave for work.
Their painting, if it can, watches them as they leave.
We're all dressed in our lovely bits of cloth, obtained from merchants, made by craftspeople who were paid. They were not paid their worth.
So far as I know, not a single artist made a penny, we left the room as no poorer, no richer monetarily, but wealthy with ideas, kindred spirit, and the bonds that only creatives can form with one another.
