Who am I creating for?

I created a piece of art. It was a new medium. I was free. Had no rules. No model from which to work. I was just experimenting. I had no idea what was going to come out of me, and that was ok. What I created was crude stylistically. A red flower. An orange center. The red bled into the blue background. The green leaves also bled into the blue background. The boundaries were lacking clarity. The black lines meant to hold the petals and leaves in place, make a clear delineation between the petals and the flower from background were redrawn several times, in an imprecise and haphazard in a way. The blue background which was drawn/painted with an intent for the color to go from darker to lighter from bottom to top, as a sky might. The lines of the sky were indeed darker to lighter, were was fragmented by haphazard blotches of color. The image looked haggard in a way. Like that flower had been through something. It bled. The world around it is wild. The air is not still with only vague predictability in that being on the ground is indeed darker.

I looked at this finished product and my eyes went to the red and green blood. To the redrawn lines. To the petals of uneven size, to the rough, almost scary sky and thought, “I need to clean this up.” This is a mess. That need was driven by the questions:

“Now what can I do with this?”

“Could I ever sell it?”

The next version felt sterile. The sky color more even. The red and green blood almost completely covered. The flower petals more evenly divided. The black lines were tamed some. But I hated it. It had been stripped entirely of who I am. Only a vague sense that there is any intensity to me. Or much messiness. A piece attempting to look well-crafted, but missing the mark. It completely repulsed to me. Even if there was a chance someone would want to hang this in their house, I didn’t want my name attached to it. It was not me.

My third attempt was to bring back some of the gradation of the sky. An attempt to bring some life back to it. Some of me back to it. This third attempt was actually divided into several stopping points. One where it went lighter …

Another that I tried to bring back some of the darkness. I realized I was getting closer. Closer to the original feeling. But it was white-washed version of the emotion. It had again had a completely different message. It was still very neat in relation to the initial version. Perhaps likely to be aesthetically pleasing to a wider group of people. I asked myself three questions:

“Who am I creating this for?” “What do I want the end piece to look like?” “Where am I hoping it will go?”

I have over 180 pieces, the majority of which are in books. Set aside. No venue, no way to share. I realized I want both ability to rawly express and to share. How does one do that?

What is likely my final version, is me really trying to recreate as closely as I can that emotion but in a stye that might have a chance of gaining some sort of audience. Can I make the message relatable and something someone else even wants to look at while at the same time being able to see myself in it. My whole self. Who do I want looking at it and how do I find these people? I need help with this. How do I even find help? But what if I just stopped with that first piece. Would it be pushed aside by the very few people who might somehow stumble across it? I do not want my art sitting in my books in my artroom gathering dust. Where are you all who can appreciate me? Appreciate that rawness? That untamed expression? But I don’t want to tame it. I still prefer that first version. It is beautiful in its imperfectness. In its rawness. In its ability to express.

But, maybe they are all me.

And I am sad that I painted over each version so all I have left of the previous version are digital images.

This is what now exists on paper.