Put Your Best Artwork Forward
Cath and I recently watched the movie The Midnight Meat Train. The story was written by Clive Barker and originally appeared in the Books of Blood. Outside of being a writer, he is also an accomplished painter. On the DVD for the movie was a little vignette about Clive and his artwork. As the film crew toured around his home looking at all his work, you’d swear that he lives in a storage space, not a house.
He had hundreds of four foot by four foot canvases stashed everywhere!They were in his studio, stacked in the spare bedroom, leaning in the hallways — he even had what seemed to be a lean-to built onto the side of his home that housed a hundred more. The man is prolific!
I found it quite amusing to hear Clive chatter while cycling through some of his old canvases predicting whether or not they could possibly be revisited and reworked or whether they’d never see the light of day.
As an artist chances are you’ve done a lot of work too; God knows I have. You’ve probably worked in a variety of mediums and a variety of styles and you probably have copious amounts of old work laying around your studio or your home. We all do. That just seems to be the way of things. Personally there isn’t a spare piece of wallspace in my apartment anymore.
I could easily stage a one man show with all the artwork that I’ve got hanging around. In fact, some friends of mine have pushed me in that direction, their thinking being that any show is better than no show at all. It’s not a bad idea — it’s a terrible one, and here’s why.
When you were in school did you ever flub your way through a project? Perhaps you had to write a term paper or put together some kind of analytical book report, but you didn’t give it all the attention that it really required and, although it was adequate, the results weren’t what you yourself would have called stellar. None-the-less, knowing that you’d put together a substandard piece of drech, you handed it in anyways feeling, perhaps, a little less than enthused about your lackluster performance. How did that make you feel? Be honest. You probably felt just a little bit of self loathing when you didn’t live up to your potential. That’s okay; it happens to the best of us — but it doesn’t have to.
There’s an old piece of advice I heard once that says, “Don’t show anything that you don’t want to be known for”. I love it and now I live by it, especially when it comes to my artwork.
Although I could stage a solo show tomorrow it would be stocked full of artwork from my past, artwork which is technically naive compared to what I’m doing now. It is also immature and not indicative of what my new artwork is trying to acheive. It reflects the me from five or ten years ago, not the me from now.
It would be detrimental to my current practice to throw my old work into the ring and hope for it to perform in the same fashion that my new work is attempting to. I’d be taking a step backwards professionally and quite frankly I’d be lying to the viewers about what I, as an artist, am all about. I could easily be setting up an audience to create memories about me and my work that are false. How is that type of action going to help me, or you?
When my artwork is unfashionably out of date or no longer congruent with my goals as a professional artist, it gets shelved. I no longer show it and rightly so. It’s not my best work, it doesn’t represent me anymore and therefore it won’t get seen, plain and simple.
When I create something that is crap — I destroy it. Unlike Mr. Barker, there will be no opportunity what-so-ever for my subpar work to be met by the viewer’s gaze.
You may find this to be a slightly harsh way to live an artistic life but ask yourself this question, “Why would I want to show substandard artwork?” Or put another way, “Why would I want to show work that doesn’t reflect the real me anymore?” Even if others don’t see it as substandard, your opinion is the one that really sways the balance of the scales at the end of the day. This is your professional practice we’re talking about after all. Are you going to let others bully you into making a decision that might be a big mistake?
It’s in your best interest to show only the best artwork you’ve got to exhibit. If you give people the wrong impression about what your artwork represents, you’ll live to regret it. If you’re trying to break onto the scene and stock your exhibition with artistic flotsam and jetsam, you may never catch that break. If you’ve already built a reputation as a competent artist, then a piss poor showing may undermine everything that you’ve worked for. Do you see what I’m getting at?
That’s why Clive Barker has a home full of artwork. That’s why most of it will never see the light of day, and more power to him and his fantastic insight. Most of what he was flipping through was crap and he knew it. They were sketches, stepping stones, lumps of coal on the way to creating a diamond. He wasn’t going to tarnish his reputation as a practicing and respected artist by showing the world just anything. He wanted to put only his best artwork forward and so should you.
It’s in your hands to show what you’re going to show. Make the right decision. Make sure to always put your best artwork forward.
For now, that is all. Goodnight.
