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............................ The
Bio
I've always thought an artist's bio
is distracting, misleading and usually boring. The important
thing is the work. If the work fails, the bio can't save it-even
one (unlike my own) full of credentials. Think of the work of
Homer (the Greek, not Winslow), or Vermeer. Where are the bios?
..........My friend Robert
Genn, the Canadian artist and writer, tells about experiencing
a "perfect moment" during a recent painting trip to
Ireland. He's had this experience before, he says, and there's
always something hauntingly familiar about it--something about
the correctness of the design or the colors, the light is just
right or whatever. He calls it an "alpine" moment and
thinks an artist has maybe ten of them in a lifetime.
...
.......I think he's right about the Ten Moments, give
or take a few. With me, it might be something seen in the world--an
experience like Robert's in the alpine meadow, although mine
are seldom that picturesque--or a scene in a movie, or something
read in a book, seen only in my mind. It has to be an image,
though, not just an idea. Usually, my efforts to make an image
out of an idea don't work out. The image must come first, usually
unexpectedly. Making sense out of it may or may not follow. The
important thing for me is to get it down as a sketch immediately.
It may seem so dramatic and vivid that it will be there in my
head forever as a permanent resource. Wrong. If I don't make
it into something tangible on the spot or very soon afterward
the image is lost..Some of the sketches
in this show are attempts to do this. Photos don't work for me
at this stage. The photo is never what I saw--it never records
that Moment.
..........But if we artists could
make sense out of our Moments--if we could track them to their
source--I don't think we would find them in the visible biographical
facts of our lives.
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I think we would find them, if at all, in the shadows,
linked in some way to important but hidden emotional episodes
in our lives. They might be archetypal or they might be purely
personal, but the unconscious need to express them--make them
visible, give birth to them, exorcise them--is probably what
fuels our creativity. All of my images could probably be grouped
around these Moments. Ten are enough. More would be unbearable.
..........My point is, the Ten Moments
do not appear in the artist's bio! As Balthus said, "Now
let us look at the pictures."
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........................................................Warren
Criswell
.........................................................June
2001
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