Practicing Art
Artists are Creatives. Some artists publicly showcase one modality while privately honing another. Some of the musicians I hold in the highest regard are also practicing visual artists. Art must be made, whatever it is.
My all-time favorite, feels-like-home band is the Beatles. John Lennon went to art school and considered [visual] arts his first love.[1] Paul McCartney had an exhibition of his own paintings in 1999, and then published a book of paintings with essays and interviews. According to the Robert Kidd Gallery, Paul McCartney had painted privately for thirty years before he went public with Paul McCartney Paintings.[2]
“Just the act of putting paint on the canvas is enough sometimes for me.”[3]
~Paul McCartney
The Avett Brothers is a contemporaneous band that I turn to repeatedly. The two brothers, the front-men, are “creatives” in various practices outside of music. For instance, Seth, the younger brother, has designed a skateboard deck and a guitar. Scott is a painter and printmaker and holds a BFA.
“I have a faith in the importance in each of us expressing ourselves and making what we’re called to make, and I hope that I can exemplify that through showing what I’ve made along the way and am making.”[4]
~Scott Avett
In 2019, a former student of mine and I visited the Saint Louis Art Museum, had lunch, and then at my behest we visited the William Shearburn Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri, to see the following exhibition: SCOTT AVETT: BRIDGING THE CREATIVE DIVIDE. From the William Shearburn Gallery’s press release on Scott Avett, “Avett has frequently said that he considers himself to be an artist first—above all else—but most people know him as a musician first.”[5]
Pictured with my student, Shellby Brannam, in front of a Rothko from SLAM, 2019. All photos by © A. Warner, 2019.
In Scott Avett’s 2019 exhibition at the William Shearburn Gallery, there were visual artworks that spanned two decades of Scott Avett’s private studio practice. The work ranged from the small 8 x 14” prints to the large 106 x 65” canvases, in such media as block prints, silkscreens, oil paintings, and more. The exhibit’s title, BRIDGING THE CREATIVE DIVIDE, refers, in part, to bridging Avett’s public musical expression and his then private visual arts practice.
I leaned in to get a closer look at the surface texture and color specificity on the smaller printed works. It was easier to look at the smaller prints such as Scrunch Nose in Pink where the pink splatters and diminishes toward the bottom right. And it was even easier to step up to Sheep Wolf, and wonder if he loaded the brayer with both green and red to create the ombré or did he choose another method.
Scrunch Nose in Pink, Scott Avett, print.
Sheep Wolf, Scott Avett, print, 2013.
Knowing that Scott Avett had created these works in the safety and solitude of his studio for years and had only recently formally publicized his works, felt intrusive and intimidating to walk up to the large-scale paintings. I am a fan of the band. I am his fan. I respect his private life. These felt personal, as if I were a paparazza hiding in the bushes of his personal business. Yet, this was a public exhibition, and he had published a monograph. I took a deep breath and enjoyed the execution and visual communication that Scott Avett offered the public.
The large works were life-like not only in naturalistic proportions and poses, but in psychological expression and gesture. The sagging shoulders and gentle eyes on Boy Sitting in Yellow are tenderness expressed from subject to artist to viewer.
Boy Sitting in Yellow, Scott Avett, oil on canvas, 2019.
And while my student and I spoke softly and reverently in the gallery about technique and subject matter, Scott Avett’s works, as much art does, lifted me and inspired me to make more work. Making art is spiritual and mundane, buoyant and grounding, questioning and affirming. I left BRIDGING with a grateful heart.
“Artists are like spiritual teachers in that they are computing mysteries in front of people…”.[6]
~Scott Avett
When I feel the most lifted and connected to the larger spirit of the universe, it is humbling and transcendent. For me, these experiences occur in the best moments of making art. There is a powerful vulnerability in letting the process take over and to become a transmitter of inspiration. The private and the public works are both made through process. Art is an ancient human endeavor.
“It’s about going so far that you lose all control and then people see your ‘unguarded’ soul, your real humanness. That’s really art to me.”[6]
~Scott Avett
Multiple Skulls, Scott Avett, print. (A lousy image of a great print, my apologies.)
