BLOG By Artist Felipe Mendoza - owner and curator of Glasgow Garage Gallery - www.gggartsales.com
Not too long ago I had a very interesting exchange with a fellow artist about what the main ingredient of art/a painting should be or have: A, a message or B, emotion? After an intellectual joust, I was more or less bested, though quietly I stood steadfast that a painting should have emotion over a message. Days passed and I felt uneasy because my core believes were shaken and I couldn’t bring myself to terms. Perhaps a painting should have a message, perhaps mine lacked such thing? Nonetheless, the challenge was set and the task was daunting – I have to produce a painting that both embodied a modern day message, whilst still stirring emotion in the soul; alas, I had to whisper music to my viewer through their minds eye.
Surely such a feat has been conquered by the masters, but could this amateur painter, this vagabond artist muster any sense comprehensive or not onto a canvas to at least save face? Time passed and it appeared this artist would surely be bested twice … but genius has a way of rewarding the persistent. Whilst listening to an interview between two people, the idea came in the form of a very strong disdain for what I was listening. I turned the radio off …anger stirred in me. I pictured the bombastic scene on the other side. “What a selfish, vein (explicit) this guy is, thinks he knows every……thing” just like that EUREKA! My emotions gave birth to a picture in my mind, a picture that has a very strong message and hence Narcissus’ Interview was bourne – let me explain the context of that radio interview below.
The host is a very well know entrepreneur and the guest a young up and coming author. The host would T-up a question for the guest and before the guest could finish the thought, the Host would cut him off and finish his sentence and add his own experiences and his own context. This went on for 15 minutes! The host was later asked why he kept interrupting and his response was that he already knew the outcome.. what!? “This (explicit) guy should just interview himself”, I told myself as I rage quit the program.
This hurt me because I cared about this Host and I still do. In my mind I had plans to physically paint this person as a Narcissist bastard, an egomaniac, a self-centered person, but time has a way of mirroring our faults back at us, if we are willing to let the dust settle. For you see, there was a time that I was like that, self-centered, egotistical, selfish. Perhaps my exchange with that other artist brought back feelings of my old faults and perhaps the message here was that more empathy should have been deployed on my part.
I went on to paint Narcissus’ Interview – true to form, but with softer colors in the style of Rothko. I did not want to give hard lines or realistic qualities to any of the objects because we are all faulty humans and we need to surround ourselves with more empathy and less judgement. Thank you for reading this Blog : )
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