Making an image of that which we can render only with our imaginations.

(In response to some current reading...)

An artist’s studio is a reflection of the mind, but it doesn’t stop there. In the end, he’s cleaning up the spots, smoothing over the edges, and consulting with his inner journalist all in an often terrifying but beautifully fulfilling attempt at exposing himself to the public. But as much as he strives to make them see, what they see will never be what truly exists within the artist’s space.

The author of Studio and Cube examines the studio as the "mind" of the artist and through an extensive look at images of different artists in their studios, he is determined to draw a line between two very distinct roles of the artist’s “mind.” Is it his “attic” or his “prison cell?” Mr. O’Doherty, it is both.

The artist lets down the ladder and each time he starts his climb, he hopes upon hope that the aged birch slats will withstand just one more trek, at least until the next one. With the fastened joints whining, he reaches in cautiously and almost timidly, searching for something no larger than a shoestring dangling in the dark. Now with a familiar path of dim lighting and somewhat polished services, he may start to explore and dig away at yet one more layer. Everything he’s ever set aside because he might need it again someday. Or did the artist at some point know that he’d find himself here, just like this, sprawled out upon this little pasture he’s carved among the residue, trying to make sense of it all.

This is his mind’s attic, and there’s so much left to be resolved.

An artist is tormented by this. Let me repeat that. An artist is tormented. Every memory, every experience, every touch is laboriously dissected. Every word, every token, every time the night falls so prematurely. And when the air speaks, he listens. When the moon glows, he extracts. And when the pin drops, he’ll trap himself in a small translucent box, still in the absence of noise, waiting for the aftershock. All of these things are gathered together, welded together, and placed in his attic for further comprehension and resolve. The ferocity with which he makes a canvas out of all things will surely prove an object of derision, but wheedle as you may, it will cut you like a knife. And as you seep outward, he will fill up a hundred resealable bags. Might the artist ever find resolution on a surface? No, I think not, but he’ll certainly take his last breath with a comforting sense of despair in that you’ll never understand but his efforts will never cease.

In the artist’s inability to have you drink from the very glass he conjures and know at once the tactile sensation of wetness at the back of his throat, he has then created his very own prison cell, nestled snuggly within these misshapen and dusty walls. He knows how it got here and likewise, that by sheer mass and measurement, it is forever trapped in that narrow space between his mind and his masquerade. He holds the brush, but a control beyond his holds the stroke, the most perceivably accurate sum of all that he knows, all that he has collected. Sometimes the artist must sit in abeyance and allow things to move without picking them up and placing them on the other side of the room.

And reductive the artist shall remain, in his mind, his attic, his self-inflicted prison cell, all that come together and make up his studio.