I’ve just finished watching Fedrico Fellini’s “8 ½” for, maybe, the 7^th or 8^th time.  It was the film that inaugurated my love affair with art, introducing, to me, a kind of aesthetic/ philosophical universe that still pulls at my heart.  For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a movie director/ artist who has begun production (involving other people’s money and the high expectations of the artistic, movie going elite of Italy) but who can’t come up with a story, theme or ...... ANYTHING.  In the end he has to scrub the whole project.  His advisor says, “Its better to destroy than to create what’s unessential.”  This is classic Felline, and is the kind of sentiment that makes art into something noble, without which painting, or any art becomes just another product, a decoration for the living room, etc.

            So, then, what does it mean to say that art is essential?  The answer I like the best is that it’s not essential for most human beings.  That we humans have a capacity for aesthetic appreciation which only shows up sporadically in the population and even among those who have it, it is seldom developed to a high standard.  That is, a standard of sensitivity and discrimination that attracts the very fact of color, texture and form to one’s soul.   The appreciation of beauty is a spiritual experience and those who posses such an appreciation are truly blessed.  Beauty, of course, is everywhere to be found for its appreciators, not just in works of art, however the artist is one who strives to make succinct and available to others, the beauty (even if his “beauty” is not “pretty”) of his individual expression.  Often an artist’s expression has little to do with “beauty” in a conventional sense, but more, as if exploring the dark caves of the mind, even sometimes, the mind of society at large (Francis Beacon, Pieter Bruegel or Rosso Fiorentino).  Often beauty is spectacular as in the aforementioned Rosso, even as the subjects are dark and mysterious.

            The Little Yogi attempts to make his humble mark in the vaulted aesthetic of this world of many overwhelming masters.  But to paint something “essential,” isn’t that a wonderful challenge?   The artist can only know that his work is essential to him, even if others call it wonderful or awful, its essentialness is not established.  The individual perceiver is the only true test.

            Anyway, we try.

Contact me at:

 email@littleyogigallery.com.
 
         I apologize for not bringing you new work lately, in Little Yogi Gallery.  About a year ago I had an episode due to medication I was taking to control tremor in my hands.  So now I'm off the old medication and trying new ones, to little effct.  If and when my hands can be brought under control I intend to take up painting where I left off.  In the meantime, I will place older work, you haven't seen yet, in the Back Room Galleries as I can find time to get to that project.