We asked three artists to talk about making art for the love of materials and for the sheer magic of transforming one’s imagination into physical reality.
What I enjoy about the process of painting is that I can draw on physical reality to create what I never could have imagined. Any material, even a discarded cardboard box, has the capacity for transformation into an object of art. Or rather, it is we who can be transformed by finding art around us. The raw materials of creativity are not the paints or canvases. Consciousness is a relationship. To think is to abstract—to move apart from a whole experience, from sense awareness. The act of painting is entering a primal and chaotic world, into which you may later invite others. There are no fixed boundaries in time and space, so any form we “see” is a map of process and change. Jane Cook
With scratchboard, I uncover light in a plane of blackness. Through a very slow process of line making, I bring reality to my inner visions. I care most about precision of form, craftsmanship, and rendering detail. Scratchboard demands preciseness and decisiveness because there is no real fixing of mistakes. This often causes great fear and hesitation, yet it is the most rewarding quality of the medium. Very little of art is sheer magic for me—my images are responses to the events in my life. Art is the way I face my fears and claim my uniqueness. At the same time it allows me to communicate and identify with others. I look for images that best fit the ideas I need to explore. When I build a large enough image vocabulary to fill all the concepts that need to come out of my mind, I plan a composition. The actual work on scratchboard is a very slow process that takes months and becomes a meditation on mark making and line usage. Perhaps I can connect my art and magic in that a magician takes a long time and a lot of practice to create a thirty second trick that seems effortless and magical. In much the same way I tear apart myself to create a surreal, magical environment that could only happen in the 16" x 20" space of my scratchboard. Clark D. Le Compte
Sheer magic and sheer joy is to transform the unseen into the seen, the non-physical into the physical, spirit into form. Our joy is not about art first, it’s about life. The act of creating, of making things that work, simultaneously explores making a life that works. Wheels within wheels, the microcosm in the macrocosm. How we do our art teaches us how we do our life. Magic is a word for what we don’t yet understand. Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The magic is in the process, that synergy of technique and concept: this joyous union is magical, constantly astonishing. Making art, with materials we love, understand, and appreciate encourages us to access deeper and deeper levels of the core of vitality and creativity. For some, the edges are most interesting, for others the comfort of the known is necessary. I love my materials because I am edgy in my interests, and polymer clay supports these explorations and inventions. It also plays well with other media. I define this medium: this medium does not define me; but it joins me. Victoria Hughes
