Ugly
There is no need to glorify art. Art is not depicting the world in a unique perspective or finding something special in ordinary things. Art is ugly.
As human beings, we have such spastic emotions so we are subjected to so many terrible things, often out of our own doing. It is so hard to let out that twisted ball of rage or desperation, so it is up to the world’s most emotional people, artists, resort to canvas or stone to unleash the ugly things balled up inside. As that little ball unravels, it dances across surfaces, or shoots out of the artist’s fingertips as little bolts of genius, to make something so ugly, that we see it as beautiful. The most inspiring masterpieces evoke fascination because we are not quite sure how an emotion so hideous could be made to look so beautiful.
As an artist, I used to think art was about communicating a message or proving a point, but I realized that it doesn’t have to be that complicated. I realized that works of art are just solid embodiments of uncontrolled emotion, and I have been grateful for some emotional experiences that have helped me grow as an artist. The night after I made a speech at my uncle’s funeral, I stayed up all night drawing. I had this numb pain inside of me that I had been unable to translate into tears at the funeral, but somehow it kept on eating away at my insides. I could feel it threatening to tear itself out of me by force, but with a pencil in my hand, I unwound the pain slowly, translating it into a language I knew well onto the page. I wasn’t quite aware of what I was drawing, but I remember seeing something ugly on the page. I spend lots of nights like that, with music playing and the house creaking as I draw and paint late into the night. When I feel angry, I use pencil because it’s something I can control and I have power over the ugly thing. When I am sad, I like to use ink or watercolors because of how meticulous and permanent they are, so I have to trust myself to manipulate them.
There have been times in my life when I feel as though everything is ugly. Sometimes I hear about people killing each other for no reason other than the satisfaction of killing someone different. Sometimes I do things that I am later disgusted by, and I don’t want to believe that I have become so ugly. Sometimes I have the courage to grasp that ugliness and wrestle it until it ceases to roar. I wrestle with a paintbrush, magazine scraps, glue, ink, and pastel, anything that will satiate the ugliness’s hunger. As I developed as an artist, I learned that what ugliness most hungers for is beauty.
I never realized that ugliness and beauty are separated by a very thin line, and the artists I most admire are those who prance along that line with a paintbrush in hand. When I first saw The Virgin by Gustav Klimt, my first impression was the breathtaking use of color and intricate swirls. I thought it to be a very complicated image until I realized that the sleeping women in the painting were depicted as ugly. Their sprawling and tangled limbs indicated erotic positions often found in many works by Klimt, sparking controversy among many people. However ugly they seemed to society, the atmosphere that surrounded them was not sensual to me, but powerful in a beautiful way. I love many of his other works including The Kiss and Adele Bloch-Bauer I, and he is a major source of inspiration for much of my artwork. I also love Georgia O’ Keefe’s unconventional way of portraying flowers and skulls, and I especially enjoyed her modernist exhibit at the Phillips Gallery. I always appreciate artists that are fearless enough to be raw in their emotions, and put something alive on a canvas. I think art can be living and breathing. It is up to the artist to make that happen.
As an artist, I want to redefine ugliness and beauty. I want to find the beauty in something ugly, or the ugliness in something beautiful. I am inspired by ballet dancers because they are breathtaking until they take off their toe shoes, and you see calluses and bloody nails. I am inspired by thunderstorms because when lightning lights up the sky for that split second, you get to see the world again, even when it should be hiding in the dark. I am inspired by childbirth, because the image and emotions surrounding the pain is exhilarating.
I am inspired by life, because life is beautiful.
