How an Old Artist Knows When to Retire

“We live in an intense and visually aggressive age: everything is drawn outward toward the sensation of the image.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara    

When I was a teacher one of the best lessons I taught was that sculpture was the object not a representation of the object.  It is the one thing that has always captivated me.  I am a learned draftsman which means I am not naturally gifted to render but was taught to satisfactorily reproduce.  40 years later one of the signs I observed to acknowledge my need to retire was the overwhelming force the image had become.  It wasn’t the artistic image creating the canon of thousands of years of Art History, but the image of capitalism married to self.  It is a heinous coupling of capitalism of design with the rise of self as the primary focus of creativity.  No image is so alluring as self, and nothing can’t be enticed to meaning by the self being idolized awash in consumer kitsch.