The Real Vision

I wonder if my primary vision—what I really want to say in my work–is not so much visual as it is a result, a release, of psychological or emotional yearnings, though they may well be subconscious.

Now it may be difficult to logically separate the two—the artist’s propensities from his psychological makeup—I do enjoy the act of painting, of creating and the “magic” of illusionism (who doesn’t enjoy watching an artist render objects on a flat surface that almost magically appear as three dimensional) but because of my own experience I must ask myself if expression in the form of art, being a singularly human endeavor, is not a way of dealing with my ability of introspection (another human trait), an ability that grants me enough knowledge to know what I in fact don’t know; that being, primarily, answers to the grand proverbial questions of the human condition.

Art is almost as peculiar to the individual as it is to the species as a whole—there are a myriad of kinds of artist’s out there doing a myriad of differing kinds of art in each field. And each artist does what he does because of varying pressures. Pressures come in many forms, like preferences, personal tastes, the afore mentioned propensities, skills, talents, influences and what I alluded to at the beginning, internal angst.

Gull (unfinished) by MTMcClanahan

I paint a certain way to express my particular angst, the angst peculiar to me and, also, those peculiar to us all. And this seems always to dictate my creations—how they are formed, what is formed–it is what creates nuance, not from a technical standpoint, but from a feeling one. It’s a strong, internal pressure. It is the pressure in my case, so much so that I must relegate the other enjoyments I derive from the process of creating to lower station when it comes to saying what my goals are–what my specific and overall vision is in art.