tribal converts -- seeking identity

Group identity is reassuring, and many just want to burrow into a tribe somewhere, want to march together, ride together, tail-gate together, it’s all good, but not everyone finds comfort that way. Some get lost from the crowd, can’t cope, and check out early various ways, but others adapt and live among us thick as thieves. The handyman with his own truck, making half as much as his brother-in-law while working twice as hard, is four times as happy, and probably saw through the game early on. 

Some living their lives on the outside choose to make art, and especially in a society besotted with commercialism and multi-media infotainment, it’s  a worthy challenge indeed. One person attempting to confront the seething maw of capitalism, that lowest denominator grinder of souls, and still remain whole and independent has to be a noble aspiration. In real life the odds are extremely steep, the path obscured by myth and misdirection, bogus experts and incompetent guides abound. The state-subsidized crowd won’t accept you, while the costs of art supplies, rent, and time spent are all borrowed against a future acceptance that may not come, and truth be told, probably won’t. It’s an arid, minimal existence even when ‘successful,‘ promising endless contention with galleries, an uncertain future and not much money. 

So why, in converted storerooms and vacant lofts, are so many people trying to do it anyway? Art supplies in some form occupy a shelf in trading posts out at the edges of habitation, and drugstores in small towns all have a few colors and a brush or two. Of course, most who try to paint, it isn’t easy, accept that a career would be out-of-the-question unattainable, but in front of an easel they dream. Is it a fantasy of glamour and bright lights, celebrity notoriety and serial debauchery, all the stuff they say on television and in the magazines about the world of art, maybe not. They think, ‘what if I could pay the rent this way.’

Success for the studio artist is staying in the studio, simple as that. The economy will drag you back and hand you a shovel, artists never make it very far up the ladder in a lifetime. Shovel with the left hand is the age-old advice for independent artists, but sometimes it takes both. However it’s done, the object is to keep working until the art supports itself, or decrepitude intervenes. That in itself qualifies for membership in an old, old tribe standing slightly beside the human race, wryly amused and keenly observant, paint brushes in hand they salute each other across the ages.