There is a question I have been mulling for a long time:  Do we artists make our art out of ego or out of passion?

Finding your passion is in your innermost longing.  The trappings of art, the outward manifestations, are a lot of bullshit.

The reality of art is digging inside oneself and finding that place where you bring a unique form to a known philosophy and say, “This is what I think about it.”  You put it out there, and if people like it, fine, and if they don’t, that’s fine, too.

Your art is your baby.  You’re going to love it because if you can’t love this part of yourself, you can’t love anything.

So are we constantly trying to cater to what “they” think?  Are we going to cater to some dealer who can sell three roses in a vase 20 times in a month so you can take a private jet to a beach and sit on your ass?

Or are you struggling every day to come up with an answer to the question:  Who in the hell am I, what am I trying to say?

I believe we are all unique.  We all have different DNA, ideas, faults, and grandeurs.  We have to find them all.  We have to go down into the mine and hope that we pull out chunks of gold and diamonds.  We are the DeBeers of the world; we just don’t know it.

Matt

One of my favorite sayings is the Nike slogan, “Just do it.”  I believe it has many connotations.

When you hear it, the easiest thing to say is, Just do what?

But that’s the mentality of waiting around for someone to instruct us what to do.

I believe that self-starting is not a blessing; it’s a reality.

If you spend your whole life taking orders from people, you have to ask yourself:  Is there anything original that’s inside me that I’m wasting?  When I’m gone, will anybody else pick up the slack of the talents I shunned?

We’d still be living in caves if we didn’t “just do it.”  Build a house of straw; when it burns down, build it of stone; when it’s too cold, put in a fire.  It’s a gradual trip, but why shouldn’t we be the ones to “just do it”?  Why does it always have to be somebody else?

People say it’s the easy thing to do, to leave it to someone else.  To me, it may or may not be easy, but it sure isn’t fulfilling.  I suppose it depends on what your vision of your life and the world is.

You’re born and you die; what happens in the middle is what counts.  I think that goes on forever.

Do we want to carry around a bag of bullshit that we happened to find on the side of the road or a bag of diamonds that we helped mine?

Just do it, and then be done with it.  Be proud of it.  It’s yours.

Matt

I absolutely, positvely believe you must love yourself before you love anyone else.

If you doubt, if you’re always sitting with a big cloud over your head which you put there yourself, then you will probably not love or be loved.

I believe we put ourselves in boxes.  Either it’s a happy box or a miserable box.

I have to get into the mood all the time that no one can do anything to me—that I do it to myself, whatever “it” is.

I choose to be happy and lovable.  There’s enough good friends and family around to tell me that if I’m not lovable, then I have to change.

That’s why straight talk is the best thing in the world.

Matt

A reader compliments Matt’s sense of fashion and asks if he is outfitted by a specific designer.

Matt responds:

Rose and I buy our own clothes.

We mix and match, and while I very rarely wear Rose’s or she wears mine, we do have a certain style that we continue to search out and are always looking for something different and comfortable.

Matt

When you’re in deep shit, look straight ahead and keep your mouth shut.

This has been a busy week!

I’m preparing gifts—hats and tote bags—to give to a group of young people coming from Chicago to Ireland, sponsored in the United States by the Boys and Girls Club, and sponsored in Ireland by the City of Cork.

They’re coming to my studio, where we’ll talk about leadership, the Umbrellas for Peace, and how we can all make a difference in the world.

I look forward to these encounters.  These young people will eventually become leaders of our country.  I believe that we should do everything we can to encourage them to become risk-takers.

I’m glad they’re coming here to spend some time with this old fool on the cliff!  When they walk down the old brick road into the village, I envision them swinging their tote bags, going off to save the world.

As for my paintings this week—they have been blowing in the wind!  The patterns that are coming out are very exciting to me.  Every so often, I change out the rocks holding them down so they don’t blow away, and take great delight in seeing what happens when nature meets cloth and paint and a human being who doesn’t know any better than to introduce all these different and warring elements into something that can hang on a wall and be either detested or lauded.

It’s all great fun.  Day in and day out, I don’t know whether I should put on my sun suit or my rain suit, but it really doesn’t matter, because they all have their place, their duty, and they all perform it, as do all the animals, insects, birds, cats, and dogs that encounter my paintings—some with great delight and some with paws, beaks, or claws.  All are invited to come and look, walk through the melee, and leave their own impressions, whatever those may be.  To me, it’s a grand gathering of species that intrigue and delight the conductor of the paint.

We had lunch recently with one of our friends who is a painter.  She has some physical issues with her back.  She also lives in a rural area, and her studio is separate from her house, so there’s a lot of room on her property to throw canvases around.

I invited her to come look at my paintings and see the madness of the drips and the paintings that are outside.  For two or three hours we took great delight in observing the dripping of paint, the interaction of the sun, the wind, the rain, and the reality that every painting doesn’t have to be the Mona Lisa; it can be some strange relationship between paint, painter, gravity, and wind.

Her paintings are very striking and bold.  I visited her husband’s new office, and to everyone’s great delight, three of her paintings adorn the walls, and they look very much at ease.  They are strong statements of a semi-abstract and abstract mode, but she also explores all avenues of figurative work.

Because of the physical things she’s dealing with, she hasn’t been able to spend all the time that she’d like to with her art.  I had to go through that a year ago with my back.

The fortunate thing is that we don’t have to spend hours at an easel.  We can spend three minutes throwing paint on something and then watching it react to its surroundings.

We can also think intensely about our work somewhere other than the sanctity of our studio.  To me, painting is a living, breathing, moving world.  We are not the dictators; we’re just along for the ride.

Matt

When I look at my paintings from one year to the next, I see that the family is still the same.  They’ve just grown wiser, older, more complex, smarter, better teachers, more mysterious in ways and more open in other ways.

The review by me is a self-examination.  Am I going forward or backwards?

The static nature of paint on canvas and how it is accomodating it is to itself at the time that it is theoretically finished—that’s just the beginning of the interpretation.

Obviously, people are changing constantly.  The universe keeps moving all the time.  If we don’t move with it, we’re being left behind.  That’s why I have to look at it really from my own discovery, to see if I’m going forwards.

Are there new ways of looking at supposedly the same old manipulation of paint, the nuances of the characters, the development of the style, the mixture of the colors?  Have they become old and redundant?  Is the process a reproduction machine?  Or is it a great magnifying glass that I’m using to look into the wonders of the microscopic world that I’ve never seen before?

These are all personal challenges that give me my report card.I am still old of body but young of spirit.  I am still a risk-taker.  I am still very limited in my knowledge and learning.

I find the review not only challenging, but scary.  I love it.

Matt

Life is a smorgasbord.

We can take it or leave it.  We can choose what we’re going to do or not do.  That is the joy, the prerogative of our species.  If we want to eat grass or filet mignon, we can do it.

We are not slaves of some unknown gene that drives us to swim from coral reef to deep ocean.

We have choices, we make them, we live them, and we should love them.  If we don’t, we should examine what the hell we’re doing this for anyway.

So, as I always say, be at it!

And if it ain’t fun, the hell with it!

Matt

The most dangerous years are the years between 9 and 90.