I'm not here to paint pretty pictures

So yeah, art philosophy problems creeping up on me again. Allow me a ramble, as I get thoughts out of my head and onto light.

I fervently believe that art should have a message, a point beyond 'look at the pretty picture' and tend to be very dismissive of any art that does not fit into that.

And yet, and yet, I feel that I am as guilty of falling into the trap of making pretty art. Or at least art that might just 'look' that way, unless you understand the reasons behind it. And I am not good at letting the reasons behind my work out into the world. Should art require homework? Homework that the artist may not have made available?

Art is interpretation, and each person interprets art differently. I am not content with that, I am trying to impart a feeling, an emotion, a disquiet or disconnect. Impose an interpretation without forcing it?

Compromise my vision? No, as egotistical as that may sound. Art as a way of showing myself to the world, begging for understanding, but never giving the viewer the clues they need to unlock the meaning, the message the feeling? Sounds about right.

And now I take an extra level in obfuscation. Titles, where given, are now being written in a sort of.. techspeak? A mixture of letters numbers and symbols. It's all very Reanimation. Not a place I thought I'd take inspiration...

Paintings a grungy industrial ethics and shiny cyberpunk titling. Drawings of missing memories and emotions and feelings, a stolen kiss you can still feel in the darkest hour. Sounds and music, noises and samples and abusive figures. Spinning circles coiled tighter than an ouroboros, dancing in the gaps between time. Where are we all, in the end? Anyway. Art as message, as meaning. Am I wrong to think this? And why is my message so overwhelmingly "Someone please understand me"

One of the reasons, I think, that I've liked the red works of Rothko. Works of such infinite depth and complexity, when I first saw it it was like being engulfed, smothered in warmth and sensual suppression. A pleasure almost physical that I have tried to find in the rest of my life and experience with the people around me.

I came close to finding this peace once. And I don't even know if I trust that memory. Memories are fickle, they fade, they change. Hence the place my drawings have gone.

While thinking of Rothko, I found this. In it, the actor Alfred Molina plays Rothko and says so much better than I what I am trying to create.