Museless

"Contemplation"

18X24

oil

I was going back through some of my older posts, and came across this one. Since I'm feeling quite museless today, I thought I would re-post this little ditty.

I suspect that most artists would relate to my state of mind this week. I am uninspired to paint. Yes, it happens. But I must persist in spite of that inconvenient truth (apologies to Al Gore, though I doubt very much that he will ever read this).

So artists/writers and other such creative types are supposed to have muses…right? I suppose it’s not to be taken literally, but I get it. As artists (whether painters, musicians, writers, or whatever), we have creative impulses that are not science-based, but more…ethereal. So we’ve created an entity that embodies that factless notion. The muse.

The problem for me is that my “muse” is inconsistent. I call her Aunt Clara. No doubt you remember Aunt Clara from “Bewitched”...Samantha’s aging aunt with the colossal memory problems, who sporadically dropped in through the chimney, and stayed just long enough to create chaos. BUT…she had inspired moments. As I recall, she once caused the blackout of the entire eastern seaboard. That’s awesome. And didn’t she once turn the Tates’ kid into twins? Hilarious (Larry Tate...what a jackass). But mostly she just screwed things up.

So that’s the inconvenient truth of my artistic life. I’ll have to press on without Aunt Clara, and hope that she shows her ash-covered chimney-face as the week progresses. And who knows? Maybe I don’t really need her after all. That’s ridiculous. Of course I need her. We all need inspiration…

But maybe the inspiration comes with nitty-gritty work. First comes work…then the muse. After all, the muse can’t do much with an artist who has no skills. So for all my fellow artists out there…just keep putting the brush to the canvas. And assume that the muse will show. At some point. Hopefully without a blackout of the eastern seaboard...