repulsive

Today during a critique of my paintings the department head said

"Lauren can't do repulsive."

And I sort of laughed and almost cried because really, it's a challenge. From someone whose opinion about art evidently matters enough to become the head of an art department. There is the challenge... Lauren the things you did here are cute, bright and shiny, cheerful. Not dark or sinister or thought provoking. Just happy and pretty.

Essentially my perception of his reaction was I'm not doing good enough.

The things I made, he called them cute. Cute is most peoples goal, right? My goal is to be repulsive? Art isn't cute, is that what he's saying? Is he saying my art would be more interesting if it were repulsive?

And I'm sitting here now thinking, how can someone's perspective change so radically? How can my goal be to repulse?

How can I ever do repulsive?

All the crap that has happened in my life made me radically optimistic.
Because nothing in the future can ever be as bad as what was in the past.
 The outrageous notion that someone would feed my baby with bottles of formula behind my back when my intention was to nurse. The entire sad sad story of my marriage. Having so-called family (in-laws, not real family) blame me for someone else's deception of his entire family. My body turned on itself and I slowed down till I became a reptile. The only way to get warm was to lay in the sun. My slow reptile brain remembered to feed itself and take care of its young, that's about it. The fact that I walked around at all was Herculean. Living for years convinced I would be eventually blind in both eyes as colors got dimmer and blurrier. Never ending continual stress on a weekly basis, wondering about my children when they aren't with me. Because I really don't trust those other people.

Repulsively optimistic?  

It's a challenge to walk upright. It's a challenge to think happy thoughts, it's a challenge to not lay down and die sometimes.

And I do a really good job of that, you know, that thing where I'm really more fine than some people I know who haven't been through half of what (in my perception really is a lot) I have been through. I'm more aware of how I've been blessed than how I've been cursed. I'm more aware of the heaps and heaps of blessings bestowed upon my life daily than I am of all that other crap.

I do reserve the right to pull the crap card. Listen here mister, I earned this pretty thing. I made this cuteness on purpose, because the other side of my brain is someplace I'd rather not go these days.

I was thinking the other day, (driving and crying, which I do a lot less these days than I have in the past) ....as I pondered my recent invitation to join an educational honor society and the need to send financial information to the food stamp people....a I was thinking, you know, I really do have it in me to fail. I have it within my soul to give up. I would never bother to spend time on anything I knew in my heart was not worth the bother.

I never ever bet on a lost cause. (I say to you gamblers, look, sit there in a chair in front of me, put all your money in my pockets, I will make silly noises, roll my eyes, you can pull on my arm and once in a while I'll hand you a dollar. Seriously, you have a better chance of winning if we do that my way.)

Where was I? Oh. Failure could be so peaceful. But I could never slip so easily into that place where other people go, they don't work hard, other people take care of them. I'm not sure how that happens, but it does, I've seen other people act like that. You know, how other people speed or drive without insurance, or do other risky things and never get caught? Not me. I'd get caught. I'd be paying tickets.

So we talked about that. I am never sure I understand what people are saying. We discussed whether, for example, my painting including an ovary, fallopian tube, part of a uterus, was graceful, etc. or repulsive, which really wasn't what I was going for. I wanted to go for a drawing and now a painting from that drawing, of something interesting to look at that from a female (my) perspective, people often feel revulsion for. They say, when they find out what I did, eew. And that's the point.

So I'm not going far enough. Right? I haven't reached the point where my artwork says much in the way of social commentary (my goal for the semester) because... it isn't repulsive.

Then he said, perhaps you should go in the other direction then, make something not just pretty, but really beautiful.

Plain scary. I'm not sure I can do beautiful either. Perhaps I am destined for mediocrity.

Beautiful is a broad term.

Here is where terminology is discussed.
What spoken word defines the value of visual art produced?
The perception of the viewer.
The education of the viewer. - Like, do we even know enough to realize what we are looking at?
The taste of the viewer.
The value the viewer places on certain messages that may or may not be transmitted through any given work of so-called art.

What does cute mean and is it good or bad?
What does pretty mean?
What is beautiful?
What is repulsive?
What is interesting?
What is art?
What is art when compared to illustration?

I'm not done yet.