In Defense of Bad Painting

I got paints for my birthday.  *yay!*  Lots of paints, and some more canvasboard, and a color-mixing chart for good measure. 

Mind you, I can’t paint.  I mean, I can make a mess, and when I’m done there are colors on one of the canvasses, seriously depleting its previous value of at least three dollars.  But to be bluntly honest, I can’t even draw a stick-figure, and I’ve only ever taken one art class, which I did mostly to see if I could hack the psychological pressure of being in the same room with a naked stranger for two hours.

So why do I do it?  More importantly, why do I (and those around me) spend money so that I can do it?  If the supplies were free, I suppose I could see doing something with them versus letting them rot (assuming there were no actual artists nearby who needed them), but no, I own a small but respectable hoarde of supplies that I bought myself, or was given as presents, and something about me absolutely insists on ruining them by turning them into horrible freaks of the art world.

I’m not "learning", though sometimes I like to think I am.  But I’ve been "painting" since I was very young, and I’m not getting any better at it, or at least I don’t think I am.  I’m getting braver about doing screwed-up things to the "paintings", and more comfortable with watering down colors, if that counts.  But it’s not like I ever expect to be good at it.  Maybe I could take classes, but I can afford them even less than the supplies, so unless I win the lottery that’s unlikely.  Anyway, nobody’s ever said that I have enough talent to even bother with classes, and I don’t blame them.  My stick figures usually look lopsided.

So:  I’m not good at it, I don’t expect to become good at it, it costs money (of which I hardly have an abundance), and it takes up time (also less than abundant, rumors to the contrary aside).  So why the hell do I keep doing it?  Hell, how do I even defend doing it?

As of last night, I had no answer to these questions.  I spent a few enjoyable hours gessoing a large portion of one of my daughter’s marker-drawings onto the middle of a half-finished large canvas of mine (and I’m so stupidly geeked about having done this, it’s ridiculous), and thought all the while about how, say, I would defend this activity to a fellow philosopher.  My husband supplied the easy answer:  Epicurianism; the pleasure I get from it is its own good.  Okay, but what if you’re not a pure Epicurian, and the fact that it’s pleasurable, alone, isn’t enough to justify the waste of time and resources? 

Well, there are some ways in which I’m sure one simply can’t justify something like my Bad Painting habit.  As a utilitarian, for example — in no way does my painting produce the most good for the most people, compared to, say, buying the same supplies for a real artist or at least someone with talent or promise.  Thankfully I’m not a utilitarian either.

But here’s what saved it for me, this morning, as if I walked into work and the Universe had an answer ready for my question. 

Why does that save it?  Quite simply, because I laughed my butt off.  And I really needed to; I woke up today with a headache and a case of the balls-out-holy-crap-crankies.  And I’m certainly not the only person who received joy from these pieces of mind-blowingly bad art (I can say that, because I actually do have a little talent with words).  Now, selfish pleasure?  Not a good in itself, really (not even necessarily so by Epicurian standards).  But laughter, and the possibility of brightening the mood of complete strangers?  Totally.  That totally counts.

Now, as in most philosophical endeavors, this answer only leads to stickier questions:  Namely, do I have to paint my awful excuses for visual art with the intention of letting them be laughed at, in order for their existence and cost to be justified?  I certainly wouldn’t be hurt by a little chortling — hey, I know enough about art to know that this isn’t it — but maybe I don’t intend to display my "art" for people’s amusement.  (Probably the "writers" in the article didn’t intend to, either.)  And, crap, arguably if I did intend it to be funny and it was, it would qualify as art again!  Because nobody doubts that a good, clever piece of humor is just as tough to pull off as most other art.  The value in this dreck seems to hinge on its being possibly good as accidental humor.

Is that enough?  Hmm, probably not enough to close the books on that particular conundrum, no.  But it is enough that I won’t feel too conflicted when I break out my new paints tonight and go to town.

(Hey.  If you read this entry, remember it.  Because long after I’m dead, somebody’ll find one painting I did that happens to work on some level, and it’ll start a whole new movement in the visual art community.  Won’t that be hilarious?)

(Hmm, you know, maybe I’d better start signing these so-called "paintings"…)