Jeremy Mann
San Francisco’s Jeremy Mann work is highly distinctive, rich with atmosphere and emotion, whether its his exquisite plein-air landscape works reminiscent of the impressionist masters, to his urban gritty city scenes. His work has been featured in magazines and galleries and collectors homes all over the world and we are delighted to be able to share this wonderfully rich and insightful interview with him.
Jeremy Mann on 120 film by Nadezda
Tonalism.com: Do you call or think of yourself as a tonalist? How or why / why not?
Jeremy Mann: Well, I never really like thinking about labels when it comes to artists. I mean, in the greater idea, a multi-experienced person is more rich than a narrow minded one, and I feel that calling someone a “portrait painter” or a “realist” in terms of their art is not only detrimental to them attempting new things with their art, but also for society trying to fathom what an “Artist” truly means.
So, when I think of definitions for my style of art, while many of the ideals follow along with tonalism, I don’t think I’ve EVER called myself that. Yet, I have books in my library even titled just The Tonalists, and biographies of all those inspiring guys, but I always saw that as just another of society’s labels for a specific genre of painting. Makes it easier for scholars to discuss, you know? I mean, for the most part it’s the critics or public who label an artistic genre and usually long after the genre had begun. But there is no distinct line between artistic genres from the artists perspective. To some, they are “Tonalists,” but to the artist themselves, I’d imagine they’d say, “I’m just painting what I like.”
Tonalism.com: What is your definition of Tonalism?
Jeremy Mann: I could give a boring answer here, a definition I’ve read in those books long ago, but that would be lame and inaccurate! (which is why I resisted going to look it up so I’d sound smart in this interview :) )
Jeremy Mann, ‘NYC in Violet Grey’, Oil on Panel, 12 x 12 inches, August, 2017
So I suppose when I think about the word, and compare it with the artists that I like who paint similar to me, my inspirations and heroes, and think strictly about the visual representation of some of my paintings, I’d say it's anything that has “Tone” as its main harmony. HA… that’s like when you look up a definition for “what is tonalism” and receive the answer “something with lots of tone.” What the hell does that mean? Harmony is not something with lots of harm, that’s for sure… but when it comes to the idea of a tone.. the first thing that comes to mind to me is a tuning fork, humming at a pitch indefinitely.
And I have a great affinity for the relationship between music and visual arts, and easily see that as a great definition of a tonalist painting. A painting who’s tone fills the room of the wall upon which it hangs. Where you can feel the entire grey day that surrounded the one moment captured, through to the cold in your bones. Or one of those summer evenings in a field where you suddenly stop wandering and say, ah… this is what Inness felt. Or the eve of night where all form is gone and the only thing left is a haze of values which vibrate perfectly in harmony with each other, with life itself, as Whistler may have smiled at one day long ago in a boat on the Thames. Unconcerned with the representation of objects, but fully immersed in the harmony of tone which exists between the light of life, and the values of their palette.
Tonalism.com: What’s been the story of your journey as an artist?
Jeremy Mann: Long and difficult.
Jeremy Mann, ‘Empire’, Oil on Panel, 42 x 84 inches, July 2016
Tonalism.com: What are the main objectives of your current approach?
Jeremy Mann: Currently, and by that meaning slowly over the last few years, I’ve been coming closer and closer in tune with my own untarnished vision with the aim to be completely free of outside constraints. The main objective, obviously, is to live a rich life (which has nothing to do with money… with a bottle of cheap wine, bread, cheese, a walking stick, a book of empty pages and a paint box with a path in front of it… I’d call that wealthy). A life where I am free to do and create anything I wish, because I will always create, and I am always curious for experiences, and I think those two things are the rails upon which I ride. Yet, every day, somebody, or something from out in that “real life,” gets in the way, and this is the same sob story that EVERY artist contends with at some point in their life. Whether they get through it and find themselves or not is up to them, it's just a choice.
So, I’ve been trying to make the tough choices which will get me closer to that dream. And they are not the most seemingly smart, but it depends on what your viewpoint, and your opinion of a “rich” life is. I had established myself as a premier cityscape painter just after graduate school, where I went to learn how to paint, after my undergrad where I learned to be myself (and then subsequently lost… at graduate school, ha!) And so, one of those hard decisions, as an artist who even surprised himself at being able to live on painting alone, was to decide never again to paint another colored cityscape in his life. If I didn’t scare my parents with my first decision to “become an artist” then I’m sure the idea to stop making one of my most successful genres would have made them faint.
Jeremy Mann, ‘Barcelona’, Plein Air, Oil on Panel, 4 x 5 inches
But it wasn’t me… anymore. We all grow, and evolve, and to become yourself you have to make a decision at every crossroad which will lead you closer to who you truly are, and while I was mastering the balancing of marks, shapes, perspectives, values and colors that I saw full of life in a city a strolled around in (which people call “cityscapes”), I never was someone who was comfortable allowing my soul to be sucked away by monetary promise. So, my life evolved from a city-life to an internal one, and it's easier to convey certain emotions with the figure than the city, especially internal emotions, so that was all I wanted to do. Along with my homemade cameras from old film, plein air painting in nature and the joy that brings, cityscape painting just didn’t fall in with those desires. The best thing I did was start learning that I can refuse to participate in something I don’t agree with, or believe to be inherently wrong, (via Einstein) and that the mass production of an artists most popular genre is basically NOT an artist at all, but a craftsman, making the same couch because it was in hot fashion at the time. I also just had to start listening to my heart, which was actually pounding audibly in the studio with every “I HATE PAINTING CITYSCAPES!!!!” but yet, my hand kept at it.
Sure. They say, “it's easy for YOU, Jeremy, to just stop painting something that is successful, but some of us need to pay the bills…” is something I know contends with the approach I’m currently meddling with, but all I can say is that I believe the happiness of the soul to be most important, and that your choices shouldn’t cause you to go against your own ethics, morals and self worth. If it does, that to me is a sign it’s the wrong choice. And so far, things in my soul are at peace, and I would only wish the same for others.
The best part is that I can still see the artist behind the art, completely regardless of any medium it is created in. Without the ability to be free to create what you wish; you may never know if you’d be a better pianist than a painter.
So, my main objective has become to pursue my dreams with passion and dedication, the only life I wish to live.
Jeremy Mann, ‘Bay Evening’, Oil on Panel, 24 x 48 inches, 2009
Tonalism.com: What was the actual process or series of events that led you to
paint as you do now?
Jeremy Mann: mmm… lets try to sum that up quickly.
The creativity which blossoms in every child, harbored by parents who encouraged curiosity and hard work. A loose undergrad of free creation. Realizing I couldn’t paint, and was therefore limited (if I couldn’t paint something, it wasn’t by choice, but by inability, and there’s where I learned that all limitations must be removed). So I borrowed $100,000 to go to grad school and learn the boring art of putting paint in the right place. NOT having a second job during that time to “pay for things” was key. NO, if you’re going to learn something, give it 100%, by the time 3 years are up, I better be so good at this that I can pay that off quickly, otherwise, what was the point? Halfway through those 3 years I saw the downfall of all artists … I was beginning to paint like everyone else. So I spent one night “finding myself” in the studio alone, and that’s where I developed my Master’s Thesis of the monotone reductive technique only using rollers which became the “Compositions” series, and later evolved into the Cityscape series as more tools and color tones were added. The point of my thesis was that “it's not the things in your hands which decide who you are as an artist, it’s the things in your mind, and if you can’t make the things in your hand depict precisely the thing in your mind, then it's NOT the things in your hand, it's just you that sucks.”
Jeremy Mann, ‘Above Cortona’, Plein Air, Oil on Panel, 4 x 5 in, Sept 2019
Once I stopped sucking, everything sorta opened up. I took off painting, applying that mindset to every new subject or scene I wished to paint. ADD: One dose of a great appreciation of analogue film where I began to make my own cameras (why artists paint from photographs when they don’t even know how to TAKE a good photograph is hilariously depressing to me). Plus a healthy dose of curiosity which, for some reason, crept back into my life and led me to begin to travel the world solo after my first successful exhibition at the John Pence Gallery, and on top of that all, the love for plein air painting after making my own travel kit out of cigar boxes. To paint a plein air scene somewhere at peace in nature makes you more aware, more human, more able to paint “life” as it really is. That basically sums up my painting up to about 2 years ago, where I’ve now spent almost as much time in the darkroom and with homemade cameras to create the distressed tonalist reference photos I use to paint from, and balancing the education of how to paint realistically, with the freedom I remember from my undergrad of experimentation and emotional self-painting has created much of my style.
Jeremy Mann, ‘Vicino a Taranto’, Oil on Panel, 6 x 6 inches, June 2014
NOW, I’m actually moving with great joy through a world of filmmaking, having found, not by accident, but by purely staying true to myself, that it seems I can elicit the thoughts and emotions in my head with greater clarity in the poetic medium of film which incorporates the visual image with time and sound. The love I have for a multitude of not only mediums but aesthetics blends, does not divide, my art. And every time I advanced something in cityscape painting, it showed up in a different form in my figure paintings. Every time I advanced some knowledge or experimentation in the darkroom of analogue photography, it showed up in my figure paintings and cityscape paintings. The more I plein air paint (which I began to do on paper in a shitty sketchbook in order to remove myself from the detestable dilemma of “creating something sellable”) opened up my painting vision to be closer to just what I want to paint like. On top of that…. Writing. Books upon books of thoughts, feelings, ideas, theories... that has brought me closer to knowing myself, and perhaps the most important thing was to physically write it down.
Now, all I know is that if I keep this trust in myself, things work out. I’ve a maddening desire to build a school somewhere in the world to teach that to people because if they just knew how great the power is to fully believe in yourself without doubt and to work hard to get it, I know their lives will change for the better, and if I had only learned that earlier…
Jeremy Mann, ‘Composed Form Study 3’, Oil on Panel, 6 x 6 inches, February 2016
Tonalism.com: Please describe a little bit of your painting process
Jeremy Mann: As I said above, it's the combination of a multitude of genuine explorations which complete the entirety of my “process.” So yes, plein air painting, while mostly just for my own enjoyment alone with the pigments and the nature that inspires them, is actually the reason for my edges and atmosphere in my studio paintings. My favorite thing to do is the Bunny Squares which just evolved from having a little 4 x 5 panel in front of me, or a blank page in the plein air sketchbook, and watching the most beautiful moments of light pass me by during the sunrise or sunset and there was just NO way to try and compose a finished piece in the 5 minutes it took for those harmonies in nature to fade into something new. I also know (and it baffles me that people are losing sight of this) that NO digital camera, not even a film camera, but especially no digital camera will ever capture the color of nature with as much clarity and harmony as our own eyes can. So, if I want LIFE to exist in my paintings that I do in the studio I need to understand LIFE fully... and that requires study from nature. As many tonalist painters are known to paint these times of subdued color and value its because that is when TONE just hums throughout the sky and the world all around, and it only lasts for just the most pleasant time, long enough to make you wonder at it, love it, and short enough to remind you of its fleeting nature. These times of sunrises and sunsets, and my desire to know them, caused the evolution of the bunny squares, hundreds of thumbnails done at those fleeting moments until you literally cannot see your palette or your panel anymore and you must only sit back and be aware. Staring at the uncapturable, and entering the next stage of painting evolution, painting from memory.
Jeremy Mann, Bunny Squares
I work from a monitor (because I love LIGHT) in the studio because I’m just not the kind of person who thinks that trying to paint something from life with precision makes it a good painting. Sure, a great masterful skill! But that’s not me. MY images are very ... mm image based. I love a flat image because I am greatly in love with composition as one of the most powerful abstract elements that should be understood in every great painting. I spend countless hours on these homemade cigar box cameras in order to get an image just how I like it before I even begin to paint it in the studio. Wait... BEFORE that I spend countless days and months just trying to find the right model to inspire me, but also the literally hundreds of dresses, silks, drapes, lights, jewelry, fabrics, etc. needed to create the photoshoot just as I need to be inspired by. At home, we hosted many live drawing parties, and I must have been frustrating for many because I never wanted anything more than 10 minute poses as you can see in all my sketchbooks. I want the emotion, the feeling, the pose, the grace, the movement and if you think you have 4 hours to capture that, well you’re not going to get it. These things then translate into the hodgepodge of image preparation and color adjustment, and many more hours on the image itself before I even begin to paint it.
Jeremy Mann: ‘NYC 26’, Oil on Panel, 48 x 48 inches, May 2016
Then, three days or so and the painting is done. Every single one of them.
And I love that because no matter how many times you try to explain to people that the actual creation of the pigment to panel is only like, 4 hours a day for 3 or 4 days, but the LIFE behind how a painting is created has taken much much longer, nobody hears it. Even Whistler’s lawsuit where its written in the books from 150 years ago says that with the greatest impact (Picasso was not the one who said it… by the way, I find that funny) is still swept under the carpet and people go “whaaaa?” but if you ask me, if you stare at a masterpiece, and I mean, a true beauty of a painting, agreed by the deepest scholar to the lowest layman, and it is made of just mud, a mop, and took about an hour… and you look a painting that took over a year to make, but it’s just… mm… well, not good. It's only clear that quality in art has nothing to do with the time it takes to put pigment to panel. It is the idea. And if the idea is strong, it can be painted in literally any way, any style... and the idea will stay strong.
Jeremy Mann, ‘Malta Sunset #4’, Plein Air, Oil on Panel, 4 x 5 inches, September 2019
If there is a tone on my surface, it is either to make alla prima easier, or to control the overall harmony desired at the end of a painting. My first step is based on my understanding of the last step. That takes hundreds of paintings to understand. Hundreds of failures and successes, and I’m up there around 643 cityscape paintings (that I didn’t throw away) and an equal amount of figure paintings, plein air, drawings... literally thousands. A repertoire of that size builds up a library of knowledge most necessary for a painter at that moment they stand before that frighting blank canvas cliché.
I have learned what I like and what I do not and I have one rule to follow for that: Try everything. If you like it, keep doing it, if you don’t like it, don’t ever do it again. Then take what you like and keep evolving and perfecting it, while at the same time, keep trying everything. It is that conditioning of choosing to eliminate things I just don’t like, perfecting the ones I do, and constantly freshening up the soup with new elements to choose from which keeps me progressing towards my goals better.
I don’t like painting over a white surface so I don’t. I like lighter over darker (cause I love LIGHT :) ) and I don’t like having a lot of stuff to deal with, so I compartmentalize the things to focus on. This is the logical process equivalent to my emotional process, you must balance both with your full abilities. Let go and release when you need to, hunker down and focus when you need to, and know at which times of the painting/creating process it's necessary to jump the track to the other one. So, in my first stage I draw out the composition in monotone. This allows me to focus ONLY on composition. Of course, without color and other paint and value in the way, the drawing can be both focused and expressive from the beginning. Often those marks will remain. Created with a combination of reductive technique, brushes, rollers, rags, fingers, whatever... (once a banana, and it worked!… for a while…) just focus on getting the drawing and all the abstract fundamentals in place. Why try to render or even think of rendering a face at this point if you can’t put the face in the right place in harmony with all the other fundamentals?
Jeremy Mann, ‘New York Sunset # 1’ Oil on Panel, 12 x 12 inches, February 2015
I let that dry. And since it was drawn in paint using a color which supports the harmony of the end result of the painting, (basically that’s the “toning” part done on the panel after most of the toning was done to the image reference, not the whole surface, just the color used to draw it out, because a tone will not help you harmonize the end result of a painting if you don’t know how to mix your silly colors, silly) and the paint is the dark and the surface is the white, the whole balance and composition is there, unimpeded by a toned surface which eliminates the higher values and just adds one more confusion. Second day, I spend about an hour staining the thing with local color values that are sorta close to what I want there in those areas. Warm for a skin or face, or blue, or orange or red here, red there. This stage is where I get stuck the most ‘cause it looks like crap right after, ‘cause the only colors you can tone with are the transparents and although you can try to mix all those bright bastards together, they just don’t harmonize without the other opaque colors. But adding any opaque color completely obliterates the drawing, and that was the point of the first day! I hate “hunting” for lost information with paint, I’m not here for painterly bravado in the studio, I’m here to make the image in my head come to life, so I do my best to retain it from the beginning. That way, there is a perfect skeleton to paint on, and the last day should be the easiest.
On the last day, well I just put the paint on it. 😊 Here is where the dancing comes in, balanced between focused time and emotional time. I do, throw stuff, dance like a madman to beautiful music, or aggressive music (I’ve playlists dedicated to Moods, and swap between them to coordinate the result of the painting.) relying on my subconscious servant (that’s good ole BIRGE HARRISON there!!) to keep my focus and skill intact while my soul spills out on the panel. I mean, I spent so much effort to come up with the image, so much dedication to drawing it out in the first stage, that it’s almost impossible to screw it up here, EXCEPT if I DON’T allow my emotions to let loose. It's only in those emotional painting stages the life gets breathed into the painting. If I sat there trying to render something out, the life slowly gets sucked out of it. I can even point out in every painting where I started that third day and where I ended it, because somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot, and my goal as an artist is to hover in that sweet spot as long as I can. Sometimes this day lasts 13 hours, sometimes 4… sometimes I split it up into 3 or 4 days if the “other life” gets in the way. (stupid responsibilities... I’d give anything for an assistant but I don’t trust anyone enough to do anything.)
Jeremy Mann, ‘Evenings on Barcelona Beaches #3’, Plein Air, Oil on Panel, 4x5 inches
To make matters worse, I’ve spent most of my life painting like this in order to build up such an ability that suits me and my soul just perfectly, that it's only NOW that I can add one more ingredient to this soup in which I create, and that’s time. Now, I leave the piece floating in this final stage of completion for just long enough for me to stop caring about it, and approach it days, or weeks, sometimes months later now that I have the time, and destroy it to a point of perfection. Throw it on the floor, spray paint, 4 foot homemade squeegies, hell I even have the equivalent of a handheld bulldozer for a 36 inch long, 18 inch thick brayer roller, ‘cause if it worked on a 4 inch panel, it should do the same thing on a 4 foot panel.. but man... that’s like 3 hours for one mark. Totally worth it.
Evolving and involving, the process forever goes. I’ve left out lots of important things too, but I’m happy to be finger winded to continue because I would hate to have a process I can describe to you in one bland paragraph.
Jeremy Mann, ‘Cedar Ridge, Grand Canyon’, Plein Air, Oil on Panel, 4 x 5 inches
Tonalism.com: Can you describe how you decide on a composition, what makes it
feel 'right' to you?
Jeremy Mann: For simplicity's sake here, I’m going to answer this in the vein that we’re strictly talking about a Composition in the abstract fundamental of it, and not another word for a “painting” cause that would take forever… Composition is most closely related to Balance. Balance is the world of competing or cooperating shapes and values. I leave color out here because something that is harmoniously balanced can be completely unharmoniously colored. So, like my process on different days, color harmony is another separate level of composition, and here I’m just focusing on a balanced composition of shapes and values. So, when a composition feels right to me, it’s because the shapes are of the right value at the right place, in the right shape and size. It may seem pretty banal or uninformative, but that is the logical definition. When I look at the beginning of composing an image, I ask myself “is it balanced.” And usually answer no. because to find the perfect balance takes forever, not every painting is ever perfectly balanced as a composition. But I’ve done composition enough to have a vision of it, and when I look at an image, and can feel what it needs to equivocate the emotion I want the balance to be. Unbalanced but balanced can have a huge bunch of aggressive shapes over here, balanced just by a little drop of something over there. No wait, there. Just a little higher. Yeah there. And as I prepare the image or even during the drawing stages, I make sure to get that just right, but always leave a bit of play room for later in the painting… say… like adding a few hairs to the scale to make it peeeeerfectly balanced. But I believe it all comes down to an intuition built over years and years of not only looking at but also creating from nothing a balance of abstract elements. So all in all, it takes lots of experiences and lots of failures.
Jeremy Mann, ‘Sunset Upon The City Lights’, Oil on Panel, 36 x 36 inches, July 2016
With that amount of wisdom, your understanding of composition evolves. And lately I’m not only seeing compositions in real life more easily, but most exciting for me, being able to compose on a moving image over time. Sheesh, and I thought composing on a panel that didn’t walk around my studio was something of an achievement… I can’t wait to see what a few years of learning to compose an image over time and space will do to what I perceive to be good composition in a still 2 dimensional image!
Jeremy Mann, ‘Rooftops in the Snow’, Oil on Panel, 18 x 24 inches, March 2014
Tonalism.com: How do you know a piece of work is finished?
Jeremy Mann: When I get pissed off and say, “GAH! I’ll do better on the next one…….” :D
I always tell people when they ask me which painting is my favorite I’ve ever done, it's usually “the last one.” But that only lasts until I start the next one…
It could be as easy a question to ask myself: “are all the parts that bother you gone?” Or “something’s missing…” and I think this question will always remain as that elusive “unanswerable” question because it is the culmination of an artist's entire life, knowing when they’ve done all they can to make the perfect masterpiece... Which will never happen, otherwise the artist would quit if they made the best piece ever. So, at every step, we learn a little more about what truly makes it finished for us each, that “something” that is missing or too much “something” in the wrong way. Since the only way to understand that is to attempt to finish a piece, each attempt at finishing a great piece is a step in the direction to knowing what it truly is that creates that “finished masterpiece.” Which it must be a masterpiece. If a piece is to be finished, then there is nothing else that can be done to it to make it better, and therefore must be the best piece ever. Since that is unattainable, there is literally no way to answer directly that question, and comes down to the most basic reason for art… does it elicit the artist's soul perfectly? I keep trying…. No artist knows the answer… and anyone who thinks they can answer that just like to fill the air with air so they feel important. They should just say “I don’t friggin know!!! That’s why I keep trying!!!”
Jeremy Mann, ‘Tuscan Sunset #1’ Plein Air, 4 x 5 inches, Oil on panel
Tonalism.com: Any advice for the aspiring painters / tonalists?
Jeremy Mann: Man… I have endless scribbles in my journals that try to answer this, long heart to hearts with workshop students that try to answer this, countless emails I send out almost weekly that touch upon these things, and have only realized that it’s a never ending answer, because being a true artist is a lifelong endeavor and there will never be a simple solution. The only goal of any artist is to be completely comfortable with who they are and to perfectly express their ideas as they alone envision them. This will never happen. It is a goal to strive for your entire life. This is why ego has no place in art, if you already think you’re a master, then you’re done. You will struggle… that’s the point. If it was easy, everyone would be an amazing artist, but everyone is not. If you have brilliant ideas, you need to be able to express them. If you have great craftsmanship, you must also have great ideas.
There is only one thing in the way of all these situations we are in at ANY point of our artistic life: Limitations. That is my main source of evolution. Learning not only WHAT my limitations are exactly but figuring out how to REMOVE them from barring my progression. It's rather a simple thing. “What is preventing you from doing what you want?” That is a limitation, and usually if you can make up the excuse, you can figure out the answer... it's just the opposite of the excuse. Then do it.
If I were to wrap it all up in a package as a guide for the artists looking for the real life, not the lure of the false “quick and easy” it would be this:
Be rich with Experiences. This builds within your character an open-minded sense of understanding, knowledge, and wisdom.
Be only Genuine. Know yourself and chase the things that are YOU, not somebody else. Be honest with full hearted resistance to compromising your own moral and ethical standards.
Hard Work. If you don’t get what you want, you didn’t want it bad enough and you lacked the WILL power to do so... Nothing is unachievable, you can attain anything you wish, but you must STRUGGLE to get there, and struggle is good, you’ll appreciate your achievements in life and learn not to sacrifice yourself for the quick and easy.
So, yes, you will struggle, but it will be for a life worth living.
And I feel sad for anyone who reads that and thinks… “sheesh, come on man, this is worthless wordiness, tell me how to get better.” Those are the people who I feel are simply incapable of being helped.
Jeremy Mann, ‘Malta Sunset #2’, Plein Air, Oil on panel, 4 x 5 inches
Tonalism.com: Saving the big question for last: What is art’s purpose in the world?
Jeremy Mann: I believe that art is the study and understanding of the human soul through the hidden language of nature.
Art as we know it today is completely removed from what it truly is. It is rather in quite a sad state… seen as a hobby everyone and their grandmother are equally involved in and at the same time creating random billionaires out of things nobody understands, and then everyone caught inbetween. At all times, Art has been the litmus paper for culture, we know this because of the monumental buildings all nations of all centuries have either built to protect art, or built as art to be decorated by art. So perhaps it’s just our culture these days in shambles and this state of art is simply expressing that. At one time, the study of the arts was as required, and as respected, as those of science, mathematics, chemistry, and biology. They are all intertwined and interrelated. Yet these days, if someone gives you two dollars change from a five dollar bill for a one dollar cookie, told you the earth was the center of the solar system and humans just appeared instead of evolved, you’d punch them in the face for thinking you were such an idiot to be fooled by that stupidity... but if someone puts a bad painting in front of your face and says it’s a masterpiece, most people say “ahhh.. yes... so I see! It must be, I mean, it’s not my taste, but everyone has their opinion!” and to that glaring contradiction of the worth of the human soul, I simply barf inside.
You’ll never paint like a master painter until you master painting like yourself. Millions of people lack the confidence in themselves to simply be happy being who they are alone with only themselves. The ability to express yourself in such a way that another human fully understands your genuine soul is rare and highly valuable. Not only because it bridges any conceivable border between two humans, but also because it instills a sense of self worth and confidence within an individual. Most all great artists we know of were genuine to themselves, and that’s why they were contradictory to the acceptable fads of the mob of the times. They were, or are, great people because they were being themselves and not participating in something they felt was inherently wrong. Why that is so overlooked as a path to follow for success in life is beyond me, but it is quite well known by anybody who works in advertising and marketing. Gufff... marketing... the practice of making you think something is more worthy than it really is… how nauseating an idea, how similar to social media these days. I’ve always believed that if something is good, it is good, you do not need to hype it up or try to sell it... you’ll just be selling yourself short... compromising your own value, and this world makes that very difficult to deal with, for everyone, every day and me included.
The laws and rules of Art are all drawn from nature, balance in a composition and balance in valence electrons come from the same place, the laws of nature. The human soul is new to this universe, and it is most easily expressed amongst each other through art. It would be a complete embarrassment to the human race if we didn’t take more seriously the study of the human soul, which quite simply is found within the study of art, of creation from within. But it cannot be something so full of gimmickry, laziness, greed and ego because none of those elements are found in nature, they are found in human behavior, they are our vices… evils that are more prevalent because they are easy and have quick results. If artistry were studied, understood, and pursued more wisely in all people, there would be a great countermeasure to all the evils of man.
There is always the possibility that perhaps I’m just too passionate about it, all miswired and mistaken, so take this all as you wish!
Be passionate about who you are and work hard to achieve your dreams for you alone, if only because it IS possible and that to me sounds like the potential for a life worth living.
Jeremy.
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