Beyond the Brush: A Lifetime of Creation and External Pressure

Look closely at the image at the top of this post. The raw energy is almost physical. The colors aren't just applied; they're a psychic eruption. The figure, a weathered artist, is caught mid-roar, his face a complex map of passion and perhaps exhaustion.

I've had a lot of fun with this image, but it’s more than just a cool piece of graphic art. To me, it perfectly captures how I have felt, as a living, breathing creator, for the past forty-eight years. (And no, I don't count my elementary years—that was just dabbling for fun.) I'm talking about the serious life of an artist, a life that began in a pivotal moment: high school AP Art.

In those early days, the casual joy of creation was suddenly replaced by a heavy expectation: to produce "quality" art that could be sold at the high school auction. That's where the pressure first found its footing. It’s that first squeeze, that internal knot, that is visualized by the massive, manic explosion of scribbled lines erupting from the figure's head in the graphic. It’s brilliant color, yes, but it is born of a chaotic pressure to perform.

In the years that followed (minus a dozen years of craft shows and selling art in shops across a wide region from the Lake of the Ozarks up to Hannibal), I worked in two very distinct modes. In the first, I created whatever the spirit drove me to create, a time of freedom. But in the second, when I was commissioned to do something specific, I felt it again. The stress. The strain. The anxiety. The same feeling that leads the figure in the graphic to grip his paintbrush like a weapon and his palette with an almost desperate hold.

For years, I have tried to articulate this feeling to others, and I think the graphic gets it. I’ve often said that art is simply what we produce at a certain moment in time. This distinction is vital. Our work is a reflection of a single moment's energy, a snapshot of experience. But that specific piece, that single canvas, is not us. It is not our definition.

The most profound element of the entire image, to me, is the second portrait on the easel. It’s also an intensely scribbled self-portrait, but it is externalized. It’s being viewed. It’s a reflection, yes, but it is static, captured. The artist on the main stage, even amid his chaotic shouting and hair-color explosion, is still alive. He is the origin of the creation, not the creation itself.

The manta I’ve lived by, and the lesson I think this graphic so powerfully communicates, is this: "It is what I do, not who I am!"

The figure in  the image isn't just an artist shouting; he's an artist holding on to his identity in the midst of the creative storm, often whipped up by external pressure to define him. The 48 years of this journey haven't always been pretty, but having a visual capture that so rawly reflects the internal landscape makes it all feel seen.