Barbara’s studio

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

To me, openings are never what you want them to be.  The excitement, relief, anxiety, and anticipation are too much to process.  There’s no apotheosis, no pinnacle, no turning point.  It’s not like theater, where at the end of a performance people get up and applaud.

Nothing gets created at an opening.  Nothing of artistic merit takes place.  All of that important stuff happens in the studio, long before the exhibition, when you’re alone.  For me, anyway, openings are something to get through, an ordeal to be endured.  The bigger the event, the less I remember it.  I pretty much walk in, and wherever I stop is where I stay.  I paint a grin on my face so fixed that by the end of the evening my jaw is sore.  I remember none of the conversations.  I stand there shaking hands, blindly mouthing, “Thank you.  Thank you very much.”  Then eventually April [Gornick, Fischl’s wife] collects me and we leave.

If, on the other hand, you were to ask me what I remember about making the paintings in a show, that’s a different story.  Imagine touching something, stroking it, jostling it, caressing it, and as you’re doing this, you are creating it.  How you touched it is how it came into existence.  Unlike other pleasures, where the feelings fade quickly as details become blurred, with paintings you remember everything.  Within the details are all the bumps and the friction, the memory of when the creative instinct flowed, when you were distracted or lazy or working too hard.  It’s all there on the canvas.  When I look at my paintings again, years later, even, I remember it all – the victory laps and the scars.

Eric Fischl and Michael Stone in Bad Boy:  My Life On and Off the Canvas  

Comments  are welcome!