If creating art were sports, than printmaking is golf.
Because there are so many ways to go wrong, and look foolish. It’s like standing on the first tee trying to keep your shot in the fairway with a crowd watching.
As I set my press the other day, lining up my sheet of paper to press into a mono print, I noticed my heart pounding and a slight shake to my hands and it felt like I was teeing up… thinking to myself, talking to myself, now don’t pick your head up Loretta, don’t try and kill it. Just nice and easy like Freddy Couples, right down the fairway. Only I was not on the fairway. I was hovering over a sheet of paper and plate. Taking my time, lining everything up as well as I could, guessing on the press setting, guessing on everything…like picking the right club and the yardage to the green.
Only I am an awful golfer.
To three-putt the green is not unusual to me. To lose a few balls to a neighbors yard along the fairway is par for the course so to speak. So this printmaking to golf analogy makes me uncomfortable, it makes me edgy. For a painter, so comfortable in the studio or on location, confident and self assured, it’s been a long time since my heart pounded with fear as I readied myself for creating. Maybe this is why I love printmaking so.
Someone told me recently that in China they use the same symbol for success and failure, because that line is so thin most of time. If you are creating art and you are not sure of how it will come out, than that is an exciting and dangerous way to work. That is the arena I want to create in. Let the paint drip. Let the paper slip. Turn the music up and take a chance.
This new monotype “Le Deux Margots, Paris” is one of two new prints selected for the
20th National Print & Drawing Exhibition at The College of Notre Dame, Maryland, March 24-April 23, 2009.
You hit this one out of the park — whether, sports or art (or writing!) the rush of risk makes it all worthwhile. –Jill Dearman http://www.bangthekeys.com