The Energy of Art
How does the energy we put into art influence how people interpret it?
This week is a moment for review, reflexion and maybe a little relaxation. I am waiting for my solo booth with Dreamsong Gallery at Dallas Art Fair to open on Thursday of this week (yay). I am planning a move mid-month to a new bigger studio space with artists Sherise Lee and Vivien Chung to the Sibling studios, a community that prioritizes queer, BIPOC and femme voices.
Our new communal space is the beginning of something and the marker of a new body of work. All this upheaval and renwal, and maybe the all the eclipses, has me feeling unsatisfied with just rehashing old ideas in the studio. I have been trying to get inspired to counteract the energy of post-partum that can set in after you send off a big body of work.
My late friend Kirk Stoller was the first person to offer the idea of creative post-partum to me as a natural reaction to the birth of a show or a project. He meant that the post-show come-down required some self-care and perhaps a break from making to rest and regroup.
It’s as if a body of work is this thing larger than the sum of its parts, and to hand it off and get closure, takes a certain type of energy that is easy to dismiss, like so much of the emotional and physical labor of being creative.
This morning, as I prepared to go to my studio, I looked to Rick Rubin’s The Creative Life to see if I could pull a helpful nugget from the text. I opened the book like an oracle, and instinctively turned to 357. I found this quote: “Whether the work comes easily through play or with difficulty through struggle, the quality of the finished piece is unaffected.”
While I love this idea, I’m not sure that it is true. Or perhaps I should say I don’t fully agree with it. For starters, quality, when it comes to art, is really subjective. I would ask the author to define his terms. Does he mean quality is the same as people like it? That it is well constructed like a boat that doesn’t sink? Does it mean that it gives off a good vibe? That it makes you think?
What we get from art and what we expect from it is also subjective. We turn to culture for different things depending on our values and our lifestyles. What I think is underrated in the interpretation of the work is the energy of intention that the artist put in, and possibly even how an artist feels about their completed work. My friend
told me once that she can often tell which painting is an artist’s favorite, just from the energy of how it is made.Sometimes paintings just radiate joy, regardless of how much technique was involved in their making, just like a text message can radiate anger, no matter how politely it was written. Why is that?
The sensing of the invisible behind our material reality calls to mind the idea of psychometry, the practice of reading the energy of an object and often the person who made it. This is a subject we have covered on a past episode of The Side Woo. Friend of the pod, Rachel Dawson, created an MFA thesis project that basically proved that psychometry is real. She invited a handful of us fellow students at CCA to make small ceramic sculptures and hired Jessica Lanyadoo, who is a podcaster, astrologer and psychic medium, to read the energy of the work. The result was a video with a voiceover of Lanyadoo’s interpretation of the person and the energy we were putting into the clay. While it wasn’t 100% accurate there were pieces that were spot on about her interpretations.
People talk about being swept up with emotion while looking at Mark Rothko’s large abstracts. Is that because of color theory or is there something more to it? Is he channeling something larger than himself into those pieces?
If this hypothesis is true, that we read energy all the time from objects, text and places, what does that mean in terms of personal responsibility as creators, writers, chefs, and human beings in the world? Are we to judge the energy we put into our creations as good or bad? Rachel Howe, another guest on The Side Woo, talks about this idea and how to set energetic boundaries in her excellent little book Witch Ethics, and on her podcast episode.
Maybe that’s what Rubin means by saying the effort doesn’t affect the quality. It’s impossible to know what is going to benefit for others. You wouldn’t necessarily want to yell at a perfect stranger in a gallery (or maybe you do), but channeling anger into an artwork so that stranger can yell with you, or feel with you, can be healing. When I was 14 nothing soothed my soul more than going to Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill concert and singing along to every angry word surrounded by a stadium full of young women doing the same.
Likewise looking at a painting that has been labored over and tended to with the utmost care can be a comforting mirror to the perfectionist side of ourselves that would benefit from being drawn out of the shadows.
I’m heading to my studio, I think, and hope to gently noodle around until I feel a call to something new.
It's like the phenomenon of our least-liked, least-worried-about piece of writing that is somehow so well-received, and the one we think is profound, the one we labored over is met with a whomp-whomp. We can never tell what will hit or why, so why not enjoy the process, if possible? I think maybe...kind of...perhaps that was Rick's point? Your paintings are beautiful, Sarah. Congrats on the show and the new space! xo
Your paintings are full of energy- so beautiful!
I’m sure there is a certain exhaustion after completing a series of work for a show! Good luck finding your next inspiration. Xoxo