ISMS, ART DECO & ANYTHING GOES December 31 2016

"I’m NEVER going to get away from my reputation as being an Art Deco painter!" she sighed.

Just when I think it’s time to leave it all behind – make a clean break – move on to greener pastures for good, it grabs my wrists tightly, gives me a good shake and says NO WAY GIRLIE. People are ringing, writing and messaging me from all corners of the world saying “I want one”.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that I don’t have any left. I’m not kidding - there’s no more of my Art Deco paintings for sale. Aspects Of Love was the last one I had in stock and that was bought last week by a woman in Melbourne.

So now I’m seriously assessing the situation and questioning why I would ever want to get away from painting in this style anyway? Why can’t I continue to do the landscapes, the still lives, AND the Art Deco and Art Nouveau influenced ladies all at the same time, as the inspiration (and demand) takes me. It’s still all my work, in my unique style… Why this pressure to move on?  

Picasso appears to have laid the varied phases of his work, spanning a 30 year period, in a neat straight line (art historians love him!) > the Blue Period > Rose Period > Cubism > Neo-classicism > Surrealism. But maybe that had something to do with the era he lived in and not because of any left-brain calculations on his part!  Because the way I see it, contemporary artists today do not and CANNOT live under the tidy banner of any clearly defined label. And let’s face it, in our century ANYTHING GOES. And the only ‘ism’ that comes to my modern mind is a word that perfectly describes what happens to me when I think of where the future of the art world is headed… paroxysm.

As the year ‘Sweet 16’ comes to a close, the time has come, once and for all, to cut the proverbial apron strings on conformity and find strength in my own creative autonomy.  And if I get labelled as being too ‘multiplicitous’ because my body of work can’t be conveniently defined, and they can’t agree on a category to box me into, then so be it. I’ll make up my own ‘ism’ ~ Multiplicitism.  And under that heading, I can pretty much create a vast abundance of whatever the muse inspires.