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This Saturday, May 6 marks the end of Artomatic 2017. So if you haven’t been yet, you really should go.

I hear a lot of people complaining, “oh there’s a lot of crap art there”, and “it’s all so amateurish” and other crappy things… Hell, I say those things. There is a lot of crap art out there. But don’t you love being one of those people that saw… The Replacement before they got signed and sober, or that first SouthPark cartoon that went viral on VHS before video was online. It was amateurish and crap, but through support it was encouraged to grow and become something. Sure, a lot of the art at Artomatic will just become…more crap.  But you may find that one thing that connects in you, or talk to an artist and see what they are striving for and maybe it aligns with something inside of you too.

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He’s the thing about making art, or music, or dance… There are feelings, ideas, emotions inside of all of us and we have little to no understanding of them. One doesn’t know why they like the color blue and they may not understand this emotion that it evokes because we may not have a name for the feeling. It may come from a part of the brain we have never studied. Often people with what we call “emotional problems” try to explain how they feel, but there may not be language to describe the feeling, yet when they see, hear to experience a piece of art, that emotion is connected and they feel understood. That is the magic of the arts. They communicate in ways beyond our limited understanding of the world and of each other and they strive to make connections that go beyond the artist’s intentions.

It’s a pretty big idea I know. And yes, it’s a little self aggrandizing to believe that I throw paint on a canvas and I am speaking the higher-language of the mind and those that see it as a splatter and not enlightened and those that see and connect are of a higher plane… Well, it does help to feel that way as an artist, at least while one is creating art. But honestly, I don’t understand the purpose of my paintings. It’s more to calm my mind, and to feel appreciation… the feeling of appreciations become a thankful reciprocal feeling towards others and all of this hopefully becomes a circle of love, appreciation and understanding.

It’s a lot to hope for from a bunch of people just trying to blow off steam, enjoy the fire dancers, and photos and paintings and bands at Artomatic. But this year has been pretty great.

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