Isolation for the artist who retains the influences of art in his life is not an artist in isolation, but a failed artist, wondering why he’s failed.

Thinking about what other artists are doing, talking about art on the internet,looking at art in museums and galleries,reading about art in art magazines,looking at art history, looking at one’s own art and wondering how to improve it. And last and most important, complaning about the state of art, and trying to reach out to others who also feel isolated. These practices undermine what the artist in isolation is trying to do, and that is, tap into something revolutionary.

June,

The best example of a painting that is the opposite of the painting in this post is a large collaborative work I made with Hanneke which I will show one of these days.

Thanks for the question, it is thought-provoking and raises more interesting questions for me than I can answer at this moment.

Me either, but if you go to the grocery store you can’t avoid them. Every time I go to pick up some bread or toothpaste I learn about their tragic love affairs, their new diets, and their cosmetic surgery (whether I want to know or not).

I do like your idea of [looking] “at what motivated and encouraged artists of the past, and [imagining] what would be relevant forms of motivation and encouragement for our time” What encourages me, I guess, is that I find enormous similarities in the common psyches. Angst and troubles and feelings of desolation and isolation are part of our human baggage, as are joy and delight and communal desires; human nature hasn’t changed all that much over the small time we’ve been like ourselves — 30,000 years or so is a blip in the greater scheme of things.

Have you a painting that comes from the opposite of your “art and isolation” one? How do they differ, aside from how you felt when you were doing them? Were some of the paintings that you’ve posted before done in a different zone?

I guess I don’t believe that the feeling of isolation that you express so well is really tied to the culture (there are many who would vociferously disagree, of course) but rather to the human condition. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from how people in our peculiar form of living managed their own angst and exhilarations. I’m thinking of Augustine and Gerard Manley Hopkins and Bronte and O’Keefe and Sappho and so on and on. I see their struggles and successes, through various devices that they improvise or work with.

David,
Your “celebrity celebrities” makes me chuckle. The reality that I exist in is me, here. I’m learning from Karl who also seems to be “here” in my presence. Luckily I don’t seem to hang around with celebrities, let along the celebrated of the celebrities. However, I could be mistaken — maybe someone on this list is really a celebrities celebrity and I’m too isolated to know.