… As much as you are able of course. We live in a world of grays, or mixed moralities and complexity and diverse perspectives, and all of that is as it should be frankly because, well, it’s how it is when you grow up. Things fuzz out from the black & white way of the world as a child. We rebel against autocracy because it pushes against all of this, but in art, we need to avoid getting bogged down in choices and complexity, we need be decisive, bold and purposeful, now more than ever. Tyrannical even, but only with ourselves. Be Caesar, to Rome, not Brutus. We as artists are required to be dictators of our creative space and that is a lot harder to be than you think. Especially for normal people, )and if you’re here on this site reading this, you are absolutely not normal. Congratulations).The subject we’re tackling this month is the depravity of the fence, the safe and inoffensive middle, sitting there, hiding there and finding excuses not to leave there. The fence is where you starve to death, it’s where your art dies. The fence is the womb of mediocrity. Simply put, Get. Off. The. F&#ing. Fence.

The Fence in your work makes boring work. And it is a hazard at all levels of the process from conceptualizing the piece, committing to exploring the piece, executing it, finishing it, framing it and hanging it to be seen by others. You will meet this terrible enemy at every stage of the creative process. And if you fail to overcome it, it will halt the progress of what you’re doing, or take a big enough bite out your piece will likely bleed out before you ever complete it. And you have to deal with it in how you make the work and even on the paper, tablet or canvas where the work is made.

Right off the bat I want to shunt an exception to the side so we can stick to the point. A vaccine against an obvious and immediate counterpoint. YES, there are audiences that love truly boring empty work en masse, so have artists like Thomas Kinkade or Devon Rodriguez. Their popularity confuses us into thinking there must be value because look at all the galdanged people. It’s pablum, easy to get and doesn’t require you to go deeper because, lucky for you there is no deeper to plumb anyway. And I’m looking at you too, Bob Ross. I love you, but it’s you that I love… your paintings… not so much. Don’t get confused by the popularity. There’s always an exception to the rule and these are that. ignore and move along. They are not a goal to aspire to. They are rich and free to do whatever they want from that wealth and are internationally famous and blah blah blah. I get it. Fame is a magnet. Resist it as a goal is all I’m saying. Don’t confuse popular with good. We’re talking about art here and we are the medium that let Van Gogh starve and die alone in poverty despite his being our cultural ambassador to the planet of humans we share, only after he was long dead and beyond aid, comfort or support. So I’m not tooting any trumpets for any of us.

 

There’s a principle the late great Lou Stathis once showed me when he had me do three test pages for an issue of a popular comic- and I touch upon it weekly ever since. The artist he had on the project could not stay out of the middle ground. All the figures looked like they were drawn from the same position as if they were standing in front of his drawing table. No zooms, no establishing shots, just everyone waste high standing or talking. Lateral movement but no push/pull, which if you make comics you know to be ESSENTIAL to the reading mechanics of their construction. Like in film, or music or even dance… when the audience is bored, you lose them. They check their phones put their minds elsewhere, and at best patiently wait for your thing to be over so they can get to something that interests them. In art, this is entirely and exactly true. A painting should grab you, it should not make your attention a thing where you have a choice in. A good painting doesn’t;t need to scream it, or be humongous. The Mona Lisa is TINY, and well, she’s just sitting there barely committing to an expression on her face. There’s a lot of things DaVinci’s most famous work, and none of it is fence sitting. There’s nothing but choices there and falling on either side of a possibility. The same is true for Picasso’s Guernica, for Bacon’s Three Studies of the Crucifixion, or Claes Oldenberg’s Clothespin. They are singular decisive and are exactly what they are. You opinion matters to their existence about as much as the barometric pressure on Venus is to your lunch today. Which is to say, not much.

When making your work, this moment of deciding comes early or should. Your composition is usually the first playground, the sense of movement, of taking hold of the viewer’s eye and commanding it down a path of your design, or purposefully not. Pollack’s No. 5 makes no demands on where your eye goes, as long as it goes to there where No. 5 lives. So be bold and be bold early, and never let up once you’ve begun. The best place to kill a piece of art is to be lazy about your choices or worse yet, not make any. Make your marks, screw it up, scream hug and cry on it and finish the piece from a place where nothing is present on that canvas that isn’t there for a reason and to do something for the piece itself. There are now extra cogs in a pocket watch, and there should be none in your book cover, poster, gallery painting or LP design. Always better to fail from trying than fail by default. This isn’t life and death- this is art, and you shouldn’t be afraid of consequences. Think about what your piece is there to do, and ink in that principle so you can then be decisive on how to execute that goal. Saul Bass; famous The Man with the Golden Arm is a supreme example of decisive and clear design, narrative singularity and making sure there’s nothing going on that isn’t what’s supposed to be going on. With his work you’re at the disco to dance on the colored floor. Anything else is a mistake, so come ready to boogie.

If you’re bad at portraits, avoid them or be better at them- and being better at human faces doesn’t;t mean being more realistic or more precise, I mean be better in a way that means be more you. Be Mondigliani, or Alice Neel or a dozen others who interpret the human face via their own decisive language, their own way of doing it. Hey there Jenny Saville, does that person really have a red gouge across her face? Who cares? Because she does here and that choice is now that face’s truth and reality. As an artist you create the laws and physical of your universe, and there is nothing more terrible for the citizens of that universe than an indecisive fence riding god who can’t decide what to make, how they want to make it, or if they even should.

Being decisive and staying off the mediocre beach blanket also means well, screwing it up from time to time. It absolutely risks making the bad call, chasing the wrong rabbit hole and simply just screwing the pooch when it comes to accomplishing what you set out to do. That’s not a cost but a benefit and the sooner you see that in such a light the better for you and your work.

 

As for your career management the same principle applies. Make of yourself who you intend, and remove everything that isn’t that. The rest is up to fate anyway so stop wasting time trying to put your hand in fate’s pocket. If you’re kind and funny but catastrophically shy and introverted, get help in the outreach parts of your career, a manage an agent or a simple spokesperson> Because waiting and hiding in your work in a corner under table hoping someone notices you and pulls you up and into stardom, is a lovely movie premise but it’s no way to think about managing the requisite external interaction you need to do. If you’re an obnoxious twit, be aware to that and commit to it’s leashing so you don’t self sabotage your career with your terrible personality. Some of us just aren’t lovable, and that’s fine. Pretending you are, or its inverse while you remain thus, is the fence incarnate, and nothing good comes from there. Be clear about who you are and what you want. If you’re a guy who obsesses over drawing dragons, and refuse to handle anything else, hug that and be proud. Know it will come at a great cost to the expanse and possibilities of your career, recognize how limiting it is as a concept, and a creative outlet… but for god’s sake don’t have all that happen due to thoughtlessness or simply not knowing. Be the dragon guy, or be the dragon guy who also makes embroidered book covers with fungus. Who knows. We are diverse in our personalities and while I think overall we as a species are introvert-leaning if not downright cave dwelling in it, there are your Paul Popes strutting through Common like Jim Morrison or Frank Miller and his right wing ideologies or Will Eisner and his absurd kindness and vivacious attack on life itself as a joy. Some bells ring louder than others. just don;t hate time trying to be something you don;t want to be, and worse yet avoid at all costs seeking to be something that mixes them up into a crowd pleasing taupe of inoffensiveness. Bold invites enmity, even if you are bold through kindness. Did you know there’s message boards and chat groups around the principle that Jane Goodall is an asshole? There is. In a universe that can pretzel bend it’s way to something like that, the idea of avoiding someone not digging your choices becomes a waste of time. So ignore it, choose boldly and let the options of others stay where they belong- with others.

 

I myself assume I have some kind of organizing style I don’t much ponder, but regardless I still chase as many off fence things as I can. Whether it’s a gallery show, an art book, a comic, a children’s picture book, a script for a tv show a music video for a rock god, a poster for a movie or an LP layout, or a film or a prose novel. I want to do all of those things and so knowing this about myself I travel in that diversity, knowing that yes, it does rob the momentum of say a proper career as a children’s book author who gathers through time and repeated works a growing flock of followers to sustain the effort and always be where they expect me to be. There is a supreme value in that sort of thinking, just not from where I sit. But I do know what my butterfly brain is costing. I also know what it’s bringing to me as well and make the choice to hug the weirdness of my hopscotching all over the place as a chosen value, for what makes my heart swell as a primary reason but also for enjoying some stability as a freelance artist without a back up job when things go south for say, children’s books or Movie posters fade as a driving economic tour de force. A table is many legs takes a lot to fall. But it would be a terrible thing for a student to mistake my choices as the right choice of them, or to encourage them to feel poorly about their more singular way of being and making work as if that were some kind negative.

The variety I talked about before/ That’s something I truly believe in. A vast ocean of diverse perspectives, fuzzy genders multicultural interactive races types styles and a dozen other divergencies I can’t even ponder right now, that to me is the ideal world to be in. Where tribalist thinking dies at the hands of options and the freedom to chose from among them. The internet has given creative people an incredible gift in access to this diversity, and yes there’s a cost too… welcome to earth and life in our universe. Let’s accept it as a current reality and move on to what to do with it or about it. As long as you commit to a choice. It doesn’t mean you then can’t change your mind later. I celebrate a fail flop over a lack of choosing any day of the week. And twice on Sundays.

This could run for a hundred thousand words so I’ll spare us that exercise for now and wrap up by returning to the principle of choosing as a the first and only real value in making your work. Make your portfolio show that decisiveness, stop wasting time to try and please everyone and end up losing everyone to boredom. Like the great Morpheus says to Neo in the simulation, “Stop trying to hit me, and HIT ME.” Whether it’s a compositional choice, a bold character direction in your novel, or making a portrait of Shirley Temple in blood, commit to the choice in what you do, be your works first and greatest advocate. Seek to achieve true purpose by working purposefully. There’s just too much out there to see and to do and make not to be bold in your choices in making work. The world needs voices that are heard, not ones trying to get along with anything. If we’re in a cultural moment where the worst of us is getting and using the bullhorn of our integrated daily cultures, then use those tools to add your voice to the din, and make a counterbalance with work that is the best of us as a people, whether it’s dragon’s, spaceships, comics journalism, or a love for little piglets who just can’t get enough ice cream, Just be that choice that lights the way for others, and helps them choose their own color on the spectrum. We all deserve it, and we all of us owe it to ourselves and to this remarkable community we share. Go make some trouble.