The Tomato-Art-Fest logo

The Nashville Flood

"Miracle", acrylic on canvas. 

"Ripe Red", acrylic on canvas.  

"Animato", acrylic on canvas. 

El Torito restaurant, Japan

La Quinta Hotel, Ca.

El Torito Restaurants

Barona Casino

Private residence

Barona Casino

Green Hills, Tn.

So you want to be an artist!  You've been doing drawings as long as you remember and you had so much fun with that paint set your uncle gave you that Christmas.  You see people selling their canvases at street shows and you dream about doing that one day.  You know you're better than that guy with the clown portraits or that lady who did those watercolor florals.  Maybe it's about time to consider taking your passion seriously.  But how do you get started?

This question is primary to any pursuit worth pursuing.  Whether you're interested in learning how to ski, surf, knit, play guitar or create a masterpiece, figuring out how to begin is how you begin.  Some people prefer hiring a tutor, which is a great way to begin, leaving the first steps up to someone who's already been there.  Others prefer the self-taught method which, although it can allow for a freedom of expression and choice of direction to pursue, can also evade the most logical and helpful lessons.  Nonetheless, that's the path I almost always take, being the pig-headed male that I am.  It has inevitably cost me days, weeks or months of extra time and struggle but it fulfills my inexhaustible sense of curiosity and therefore is worth the work.  Either way, whether you're into the hunt and peck method or the tutoring kind, there's something I've learned after a multitude of pursuits, and that is that anything worth pursuing takes a good three years to get comfortable with.

Is that daunting to you?  Does three years of learning sound like a deterent?  Let me sooth your fears a bit.  I don't mean that it will take three years before you can paint a painting, surf a wave or write a song.  But, after 3 years of following your path, you will begin to feel competent, ie.- comfortable in your new avocation.  You may not be a master, but you'll know enough to be able to call yourself a skier, a pianist or, yes, an artist.  And isn't that the place you want to be?

So, if becoming an artist, a tennis player or a black belt is your passion, prepare to give it three years.  Don't be discouraged if you aren't brilliant before then.  The truth is you probably won't be brilliant for some time after that.  But by then, you'll have absorbed your passion enough to consider yourself a real player.  After that, mastering your art is just a matter of doing what you do.  What you have been doing for the past three years has now become part of who you are.  And if anyone asks you, you can finally say, yes, you are a______________.

Every so often a real pearl of wisdom drops between my ears and makes itself known.  This, from the sound of it, may not be one of them.  But on further consideration...

"BETTER IS BETTER".  Okay, it don't look like this mare's gonna win the derby, but think about it.  We are raised to achieve greatness.  Our parents and teachers fill our heads with dollops like, "Unless you win, you're a loser" and "Practice makes perfect".  Or my favorite, "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."  What's this message tell us?  It says that we need to be perfect in order to be acceptable.  Well, personally, I only know of one guy who was labeled as perfect and he was nailed to a cross!  This is the planet Earth- an imperfect world made of imperfect people, using imperfect materials trying to create perfection?!?  It doesn't even make sense!

The truth is that we are consciously aware of the concept of perfection but we never will attain it.  We are driven by the goal and that's real deal.  We are all absolutely equal in the fact that none of us can achieve perfection but we all can take aim in that direction and that is the only reason we've ever progressed beyond our limited ancestors.  The truth is that perfection is a nice target but "Better Is Better".  It means that improvement, no matter how small, is significant and important.  It means that trying hard does count, even if the achievement is minor.  And most importantly, it means that we aren't destined to fail!  Under the concept of achieving perfection, our whole history is a complete and utter failure.  Under the weight of being told we need to be the best, endless generations of capable, creative people have been stifled into inaction out of fear of failure.  It's not only cruel, it's criminal because the actual achievement of perfection is impossible and therefore it makes all of our race doomed to fail.

This may sound like a pretty heavy handed cross to bear for the simple request of achievement and for a lot of people, the request is fine because they never take it seriously.  But so many people I've known to be bright, strong, capable, beautiful people have spent their lives in remorse and self loathing for not being able to live up to the goals their parents, their peers and their society has set up for them.  For the highly sensitive individual, which most creatives are, knowing that perfection is expected is enough to never try at all.  What a waste of talent and imagination!

Don't let yourself get caught in the doomed cycle of perfectionism, either for yourself, your kids or your friends.  When you or others are working on project, any project, give yourselves a break: it doesn't have to be perfect- it can't be.  Just aim up and remember- Better IS Better!!  Get it?

When I was just a shade taller than my dad's knees, I remember the very first things he taught me how to draw.  The first was an ocean liner and the second was a biplane.  Now, these weren't any great feats of artistic draftsmanship, but they had one thing that has held my attention right to this very day: depth.  With a few simple lines, my father showed me that the white piece of paper in front of me didn't have to stay flat.  It could recede into the distance, it could create the illusion of layers- DEPTH!  These were my first lessons in perspective and angles but they were much more than that for me.  They were magic!  Miracles right before my eyes.  And it's taken all these years to put a name to that miraculous power.  Alchemy.  The ancient pseudo science of transforming one matter into another, in this case transforming two into three dimensions rather than lead into gold.  As far as I'm concerned, the transformation is easily as or more valuable than gold and has been the foundation of my whole life's development.

The alchemy of art still amazes me today, whether it's my own work or someone else's.  The ability to transform the viewer's experience through manipulation of materials feels like magic.  One time I had been viewing the burial monuments of the past popes in St. Peter's cathederal.  One in particular stunned me.  The foot of the pope that was represented in the statue rested on a pillow- all having been carved out of marble.  I couldn't, for the life of me, accept the hardness of the stone as the ability of this seminally unknown sculptor had miraculously changed the white Carrera marble into skin and stuffed and tufted fabric.  The effect was uncanny and it change the way I saw classical sculpture right then.  On the way out of the cathedral, we stopped to take one more look at Michelangelo's magnificent 'La Pieta', resting behind bulletproof glass near the entrance.  On the way in, I gave it 'my respects', but didn't see it!  Now, there it was- the softness, the emotion, the pathos, the absolute genius of rendering solid material into a weaping, grieving mother holding the body of her son, the Christ.  I could have sworn her chest was heaving as tears ran down her tortured but gracious face.  Now I saw it: the reason 'La Pieta' has remained as one of the most enduring masterpieces of sculpture for over 500 years.  Michelangelo was able to capture a moment, a single intimate moment of profound feeling and placed it permanently and perfectly held in solid stone!  This is not just art!  This is more than design and shape, light and shadow.  This is Magic and every person who has the willingness, the talent, the cunning and the audacity to call him or herself an artist has a great responsibility ahead of them.

Every artist who has had any experience making a living with their craft has heard the cat call at least once: "Why don't you get a real job?".  Even though our whole world is constructed and filled with the product of the artistic temperament, our society still sees it as an advocation, not a vocation: a pastime, not a job.  Where would our world be without the architects, the clothing designers, the image makers, the movie makers, the craftsmen and the creators- all artists?  We are responsible for creating the world we know today, for capturing the moment and making it stand throughout history.  We are not just hobbyists and self-endulgent, egocentric social outcasts trying desparately to create anything that gives our lives meaning!  We see the meaning of life!  As individuals, intuitively, collectively, we see life as no one else can, and we have more than the gall and temerity to attempt to capture it, we have to!  It's in our natures and in our souls and to live without creating, for us, is to not live at all!

So, when you see anyone's attempt to capture their vision, no matter how insignificant, how immature, how untrained or how audacious, give them respect.  They are trying to do the impossible- they are artists and they are making Magic!

Okay, I'm gonna say it.  I dislike the possible implications people might read into this, but I have to state the obvious- we create because we are mirrors of our Creator.

This is not a spiritual or religious declaration.  I'm not staking a claim to divinity.  Nor am I putting artists and creators into a divine category that is in any way beyond, above or superior to the rest of you schmucks.  The reality is, if there is any divine spark in any of us, it would be in all of us albeit maybe unrealized as of yet. And, however you may view existence as we know it, we are not our own creation, therefore I choose to adopt the term 'Creator' as a catch all for any interpretation of creation myth or big bang that suits you. 

We are what we are, whatever that is!  It's all perspective anyway and depending on this season's box seats that you pre-ordered online before coming here, your view of this particular moment in this particular miniscule quadrant of this particular perception of reality might actually not be shared by anyone at all. 

What does that make you?  Unique.  There really is no one in the universe that can claim the same mindset, the same vision or perspective as you.  With that in mind, it's amazing that we can agree on anything.  Lucky for us Homo Sapiens, our field of vision is limited to a few basic physical senses with some debatable sensory input on the side so, coming to a general consensus over something as common and shared as, say, the color of sky is a possibility, if only remotely. 

Yet, being the amazingly egocentric anthropomorphs tthat we are, we repeatedly assume that every other creature, human or otherwise, must perceive reality as we do ('we' being the royal, yet absolutely singular 'we').  It requires an amazing amount of study, dissection, revision and speculation for us to even attempt to understand another's perception, let alone another species.

And thus was born art.  Not just as a decorative record of our regal existence, but as a mark of commonality- a place to begin the dialog of possible shared perceptions of a massively complex and chaotic reality.  We've done this dance for so long that we don't even notice the work involved.  Hair styles, fabrics and textures, gestures, utterances, policies,economics, religions, flavors and fantasies all coalescing over eons to bring us to our present moment of self understanding that is equally amazing as it is grotesque.

We've got a long way to go before we can claim any relation to our own concepts of divinity.  This is not an easy task.   But if a picture can say a thousand words, then we might be able to tighten up our own evolution a little more effectively with the use of a pencil rather than a pen or sword.

Why create?  The question is loaded with implications.  What is creation?  Where does the impulse come from?  Is there such a thing as good versus evil or are we simply trying to give purpose and meaning to an ultimately chaotic and random existence?

These questions are important and essential to understanding ourselves and our universe, but the drive to create and manipulate our surroundings continues regardless.  Whether we ever come to understand our existence beyond the myopic egocentric surround that we inevitably find ourselves mired in, the creative instinct will keep pushing us toward a clearer and hopefully a more concise vision of our place in the cosmos.  Hopefully only with this caveat- that the better we come to understand ourselves, the better we learn to not take ourselves too seriously.  I believe that will come with the territory,  If our past is any indicator, we've got a lot of serious mistakes to live down.