Bitch, we've got a problem

so this drawing of mine was on my myspace someone commented that even my bones look painful.
Yes,most of my art does convey pain, even wheni dont mean for it to. Drawing is painful - for my brain and my fingers.

I have had people demand that my art be taken out of the gallery bc it is tasteless, i have had some nasty comments left in sign books (you need to find god! Bad art - depressing!) I have had a person so touched by my paintings that they left the studio in tears. I had an elderly black woman grab my wrist and say lovingly - "this is beautiful you see dont you?" I had the Dept Head at a University tell me i had no talent and no skill. I had a professor tell me i made the most genuine art he had seen years and would i like to teach an adjunct class at the college.

I guess what im saying is that i know i should take most comments "with a grain of salt" and weigh constructive criticism and all of that. But sometimes, bc my art is so personal and painful, i get really angry about the "tasteless" and "gory" comments.

Art is about TRUTH to me, the art i like to see and the art i make. I can appreciate a person who can accurately render a figure or what have you...Really I can appreciate all kinds of art and let it be what it is without making a huge judgement based on MY personal experience. i admire that each piece of art tells a story, a story very different from mine. I just grow weary of art and media and advertising that glorifies the priveleged experience of thin white women in expensive clothes that look hip and drink 14 dollar coffee. Or at least i grow weary of hearing that that is real art and my decomposing figures are tacky.

No, what is tacky is the education system in the state that i live in and the ignorance that results. What is tacky is the civilian body count in Iraq and the helpless faces of refugees leaving afghanistan right before USA headed in there. Self induced abortions and self injury and the real face of eating disorders (not the glossed over diamond encrusted made up models)..are the things that I make art about. Is it pretty? um..NO. What is pretty?

I try to include, whether by color or by flowers or insects a message of HOPE in my art work,bc i do believe in recovery and healing and redemption,but i refuse to make art (just so i can SELL IT)based on false hope and lies. The world can be brutal place and to ignore that to paint water lillies or cute children is not honest for me. It is not an OPTION for me. (Although of course, i can appreciate the message and vision of a person who finds peace in painting landscapes in calming hues. Actually on of my best friends does just that.)

Maybe i am too sensitive to the horror of planet earth, and maybe i always have been. When i was growing up, in my safe childhood in a big house out in the country, i was very aware that there was a famine in ethiopia, Russia could nuke us at any moment and sometimes animals on our farm died horrid deaths for no reason. A dog could rip a cute baby possum to shreds in minutes and the Challenger could explode over the earth. I also knew about Van Gogh and Magritte and Maplethorpe. Basquait and Grimm's Fairy Tales. I bring all this to the studio right before i clear my head and paint white over everthing, tostart anew.

Asking to be understood is a huge risk, asking to be understood by people you actually WANT to understand is a bigger risk. Believing that you have a right to speak up, just like everyone else, is just a given for some people. Some of us spent years learning to believe that.