Hi. I'm Eric Bell, and I'm a painter, or at least I was. Over the past few years, while focusing on things like my job (I'm a high school art teacher), it has gotten harder and harder for me to identify with what I have always thought it meant to be a painter.
The word painter has always carried a great deal of weight to me. There is history to consider. There are expectations and canons of belief. There is a collective baggage. Each one of us who has ever touched paint to surface has to understand that. We come to the situation not new and fresh, but with a history as rich as that of mankind to take into consideration. We stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us.
So how do I fit into all of that? I don't know. The things I do know are that if I ever was a painter, I can be one again. I know that I didn't paint often enough, didn't really feel like my ideas were coming from the right place, didn't feel relevant. So how do I work through that?
I paint.
Lately I've been pushing myself toward increased productivity. Getting back on that horse. The intention of this blog is to chronicle my journey back to being a painter. Enjoy the ride.
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