NYAB Event - John Beardman "Painting as Re-creation"

John Beardman "Painting as Re-creation"

M55 Art

This event has ended.

As I enter the last stage of my life I face a wholly unexpected audience. I had hoped for a place in the art world, but like most areas in this consumer society, this world is the market, and that has spoken. (I once met a curator who thought that it was not possible that a first-rate painter could have escaped the notice of professional curators.) In that world, if you are not known, you are not.

As with most failures, this has come with a hidden reward—freedom. I’ve had the good fortune to not have been given the approval and accolades I had so wanted, that of a faceless audience of people who would re-enforce and reward me with a place, if not eminence. My prayers have been denied and I thank whatever gods have denied me.

Perhaps failure is not the word for I’m not being completely truthful in what I wanted, for part of me has always been afraid that if I were to succeed I would stop growing. I have lacked the faith in myself to be able to resist corruption. I have seen so many artists be destroyed by fame that I have done everything to sabotage myself professionally.

There is a touch of bitterness that comes with the knowledge that, conscious and unconscious aside, it’s just not going to happen, and for good reason. I make art but I can’t sell it. The art that is marketed is the art that reflects who its audience is. It’s not just fashion or investment that drives the mavens who steer the art world, it’s that they see themselves there. To mangle Emerson, you can choose the paint—or the extension cords— you will, you will make but a picture of who you are. My critical facilities have not been diminished. The art market that rejects me feeds me nevertheless.

I have the great fortune to be able to visit my past in a very physical way—through the art I have made in the past. To re paint an old image is to search for integrity. It’s my recreation, and a demanding one it is. How rarely can we recycle our past.

To be completely present with a piece of the past is to transcend time. All time is now.

Past, present, future melt as I approach a painting done some 40 years ago. I see it fresh and it dictates to me. I am its tool. Time slips through my fingers, becomes coagulated, as it were, in the paint—a brush stroke opens a wound that is formed by that which seals and heals it.

The melting and dissolution of any sense of myself that results with simply following the task at hand is not just akin to love. It is love. This is not a small gift.

That audience is but one fellow and he is about to have his breakfast.