The gifts of obscurity
Making art from a deep well of generosity and other lessons learned from reading Virginia Woolf's novel, "Orlando".
Every artist is bound to question their legacy. We wonder what we’ll leave behind, question if the current project is the right project, and worry that we will never reach our fullest potential that we know we could reach if we were given the time, resources and energy necesserry to do it. The majority of us are so time poor and economically strained that we find it difficult to justify the cost of materials and time spent on our silly little paintings and our knitting and crochet. Within the value structure of modern culture, the artist struggles desperately to find a way to fit within it. It seems impossible to create from the deep wells of our souls and satisfy our urge to pursue pure self expression while we struggle to pay the rent, pay for groceries, and nurture our spiritual and physical health. Many of us have turned to craft in recent years in response to a global pandemic and a capitalistic mindset follows us into our creative work. We have followed the call of self promotion that we all find nauseating in hopes of being seen, and perhaps using our creative work to secure our survival. Paradoxically, the pursuit of artistic expression in and of itself is essential nourishment for the artist. So how does an emerging artist get by?
New artists are encouraged to immediately find a niche and reproduce images that are “marketable”, but this is simply not a path to any genuine creative expression. It is my belief that art at it’s best serves a divine purpose to humanity. Allowing your art to be commodified in this way robs your work of it’s divinity. There is great danger in the reducing our creative expressions to a 30-second-or-less blurb. Practicing art in this way will never lead us towards the growth and fulfilment that we first sought out in our creative endeavors. Try as you might, it simply will not lead you to the result that you truly want as an artist.
I read Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando” last summer. At the time I was working on several paintings I felt deep embarassment over. Making art felt agonizing. It deeply that painting was something I must do, but sitting at my eisle often felt like dragging myself to a guillotine. I was also deep into reading art history and criticism, and came to the realization that painting had been declared “dead” by the institution of art decades before my birth in 1993. So what was the point of putting myself through all of this anguish?
As a protagonist, Orlando finds himself in the same predicament. Orlando is an aspiring poet who lives 400 years, in which time he undergoes a magical transition into a woman and spends the entirity of his 400 years toiling over a poem called “The Oak Tree.” Orlando agonizes over his poem, antagonizes himself, feels that his work falls short compared to the poets he admires. He attempts several literary styles and fails at all of them. After a couple hundred years of picking away at his poem, he presents his poem to a critic who delcares poetry dead on the spot, which sends Orlando spiraling into despair. Finding himself facing his fear of obscurity dead in the face, Orlando comes to the realization that this is the way of all great poets. And so did I. The embarrassment, shame and inferiority that every new artist must push through is the way through. It is simply apart of the process.
In this passage, Orlando looks out over the skyline of London in the 17th century and admires the the crafstmanship of the spires, the brick work, the well kempt landscapes of his city and comes to find “the delight of having no name, but being like a wave which returns to the deep body of the sea.” Later, Orlando proclaims:
“Better was it to go unknown, and leave behind you an arch, a potting shed, a wall where peaches ripen, than to burn like a meteor and leave no dust.”
From where we stand today, there is not much beauty left to marvel at. We are artists that arrived after all of the great art movements have already happened. We can only turn to museums now to marvel at beauty. And so, as artists in this time our greatest role is to become good stewards of beauty, of myth and keep the magic of our humanity alive. We must be vigilant and hold art and poetry close to our hearts and remind ourselves and eachother of it’s importance regularly. We have to keep art alive, and we must leave beauty behind us in some way, regardless of what kind of notariety that art might bring us.