Painting and Performance

The most spontaneous and vulnerable acts of creation and their true division

(1) Painting as Happening

In my experience, there are two distinct activities of painting. Visually, one may place the difference as that of representation versus abstraction. However, the separation occurs even before the paint spreads across the canvas. The action of painting that is not referred to in this essay is that of premeditation and concept. Instead, I specifically refer to the action of painting that is purely spontaneous. This instance of painting I call a Happening, in itself, rather than a process to reach a completed canvas.

Painting is a kind of performative monologue that occurs within my mind. When I take a brush into my hand—in those moments when concept is not guiding my actions—the tool is simply an extension of my body. Maybe, more accurately, it is an extension of my being. I do not dictate the movement consciously. It is much more a dance that my heart choreographs, sending foreign signals to my brain which my hands then translate. It is merely with the sensation of the paint and the surface that it covers with which my heart collaborates.

This Happening does not occur often. When it does, it is under the influence of a specific state-of-mind—whether it be rage, despair, love, or the lack of all the above. An impassioned chaos takes over my body. I bear it in physical pain through my chest and arms. I sense it in torturous jitters and restlessness. My eyes fail to focus on any specific point ahead of me because my mind is hypnotised by a whirlwind of abstract instances of memory. In moments, I am simultaneously detached from my being, lacking complete control, but also so intrinsically anchored to every single sensation that my heart and mind are feeling. I am not the me that everybody else would recognise, but I am so completely the person I know.

In this Happening, I am powerless. When I start to paint, I seem to be out-of-body. That sudden state-of-mind dictates my creation and I am almost instantly relieved of the tension within me. After a few minutes, my muscles loosen and relax and the pace of my heartbeat slows to resting. When I am hit with anxiety, I desperately desire the release of energy painting provides me, but it suddenly becomes a missing part of me once it is gone. I am so energised by these emotions and so invigorated by the honesty of their creation that I am empty and shallow when the moment passes. It pains me, yet I crave it so.

The time between such bursts are long drawn out periods of conceptual and intellectual thought that engage my mind but do not fill the void that manifested. Premeditated painting may not be unlike the physicality of these happenings but it is far from the spiritual sensations experienced. The lines and colors laid on the surface matter little as they are merely the artefact of the Happening. The final state of the work is in the body, rather than the image on the canvas. Such work never has a title, but is referred to by the time and day it came to be in hopes of reminding me of the event in my life which may have triggered a response.

On a subsequent day, I can easily trace the abstract strokes I had created, but no reproduction could maintain the essence of the moment of which even literary forms would fail to define. Even as I write this, desperately trying to emulate my experience, I am not within it and, therefore, struggle to find the words to substantially convey it.

I wonder if I am describing a feeling another artist would simply entitle inspiration. But it feels far more wretched than the optimistic notions of such a term. As an artist, this is the work I am most afraid to show the public. I see much more superiority in the work created intellectually than that which potentially reveals my twisted mind. I wonder which makes me a better artist; if my very human desire for privacy is compromising my potential as an artist. I truly fear that what I am much more comfortable maintaining personal may be what is keeping me from becoming the honest and expressive artist that I aspire to be.

It is in this where painting embodies performance. However much it torments me that my viewer is not witness to my internal dialogue, I cling to the traditional medium displayed statically in a gallery space as my moment of refuge.