All About Me Stuff (and why I think Paris Hilton has balls)...
These pages are a little narcissistic, aren’t they? I suppose folks are curious, although I feel a little weirdtrying to come up with things that make me seem, well, not boring.
I wake up and paint like most other artists I know and try to squeeze the “must dos” in life around the edges. I can divulge that I follow directions poorly in several languages and have been told I’m not easy to live with, but I disagree with that last bit. I think I’m marvelous company and so does my affectionateBouvier/ studio mascot.
This process of writing about myself, spilling my life out onto the blank white page, brings up a deep-seated fear of having absolutely nothing extraordinary to say. It runs parallel to my fear of facing an empty white canvas… and to still be facing it eight hours later. Quelle horreur!
I mean, it’s not like I’m some protagonist in an adventure film who is actually a sleeper cell spy and gets activated on the way to work at my dead-end job on the commuter train by a mixed-breed seeing eye dog that barks three times, at the same time as my cell phone rings.
Then I perform numerous epic feats of daring heroics to save the world and end up free-falling from a low flying plane, using my wind breaker as a kite and land on a fabulous yacht that just happens to be piloted by Brad Pitt (sans Angelina) or that new guy playing James Bond -- or Johnny Depp would be fine, and we sail off into unmarried bliss until our next big adventure.
Yeah, so my All About Me stuff doesn’t go exactly like that.
But I will tell you that I think Paris Hilton has real balls. No, not literally of course, figuratively. She defiantly has a true talent for turning absolutely nothing of substance into something people drool over. Yeah, I said it, or wrote it, to be more accurate. She can actually make money as a spokesperson for the beautiful party crowd endorsing this bar or that casino as THE place to go. Amazing! Like I said, she’s got balls, and frankly, I kinda admire that. Thank god, I’ve lived in Europe for the past six years and don’t watch TV, but when I come back and visit the States, I gotta admit, it’s like a train wreck that I can’t help but look at.
Right now, I’m tap tapping on my computer in Malta and I don’t mean Malta, Texas, I mean Europe. And yes it really is a country, however small (122 square miles), and has been independent for over forty years.
Whatever Continental Airlines thinks, I don’t need a visa from the UK to come back home here. Since I really don’t like to quarrel, at the airline check-in I whipped out my handy carte de sejour from France where I have a little country house. Because it’s in the EU, they let me get on the plane and come back to Malta anyway, even though they still had doubts about the country’s sovereignty.
Come on people, there is even an air force now in Malta, since two Libyan pilots defected along with their jets. So they didn’t have full tanks of gas when they left and Malta was the closest place they could find to land, yet oddly enough, I take great comfort in this fact.
So why blog?
Believe it or not, I have a lot running around in my faux blond head and I want have a deeper, more personal, expressive dialogue about life and art and creativity. This is an opportunity for me to share my everyday creative experience, how it develops and reflections on the process. It ranges from dark to light and all the shades in-between.
Some of the entries are daily paintings I do, not unlike practicing scales on a piano, except scales are easier ‘cause I know when I’ve hit a wrong note. Painting is much more subjective and depends on my mood, which I admit varies a lot.
Some of the entries will be more in depth and complete. Some are just plain, odd things I do that I’ve never shown anyone before. So if you choose to follow along, I promise there will be some revealing stuff, unlike all the facts that I put on my website. That is where you can see my shows, collectors, education and other stuff along with a bunch of paintings if you’d like to take a peek@www.brucebingham.com
This blog reveals more of the process that coincides with the way I try to create my life.
I’m a big Ken Wilber fan and agree with his Integral philosophy that states everything is “true but partial.” That mirrors the way I try to create my paintings. I’m trying to integrate all the aspects of fine art, edge, line, texture, color, shape and composition into a vocabulary of expressing myself through paint. It’s hard to get it all right in one painting, but if I did, now that would be an absolute masterpiece.
So I keep trying.
Often, I focus on one or two of these aspects per painting. Just as one chapter doesn’t make a great novel, or a stanza of music a great symphony, each painting is simply a chronicle of my creative journey. It’s my attempt to cover miles and miles of canvas, a quest fueled by curiosity to learn more, see more, and experience more in pursuit of excellence, one step at a time.
Bill Murray showed the benefit of baby steps in the classic film What About Bob. What I’m creating now is my life, my own autobiography in paint titled, All About Bruce.
