#i'm so so sorry if this bored you.... whiiiiich it probably will i mean... it got pretty lenghty

[mellorad]

canadiangold replied to your post “the questions that keep me up at night: why is my vent art so much...”

maybe it's because you're just letting your emotions out, not even trying to keep everything contained, so there's more emotional energy behind the vent art? Sorry, I just really like overthinking things like this :|

@canadiangold Heyo there my dude!! I’ve been thinking about your reply a lot, and I had meant to get back to you earlier; my apologies!! But firstly, let me tell you that there’s absolutely no need for you to apologize; you’re definitely not overthinking it, and I believe discussing the subject of art and its underlying motivations/feelings/context/role/etc is extremely important, and an excellent form of exercising the brain and putting your own argumentative capabilities to the test. 

So, no, you aren’t overthinking: you’re presenting your point of view on a subject that intrigued you, and incited an attempt towards an answer; nothing wrong with that, quite the contrary!

okay so on the topic of emotional energy and expressivity in art

I agree with you completely; there is indeed much more emotional energy behind vent art, in this case, directly influencing its expressiveness and... carefreeness, so to speak. 

You see, creating art of any sort is a balancing act between several factors: instilling your own personality, story and values into your work, conveying an idea/feeling/story, while working with the tools at hand; your own expertise when it comes to handling certain materials, anatomy, perspective, painting, etc etc. 

As you produce art, you’re constantly moving forward; whether it’s a conscious effort or not, you are constantly learning, improving, and ultimately striving for an ideal of perfection (note: “an” ideal of perfection; while achieving perfection is impossible, perfection itself is a pretty flexible concept, in the sense that pieces of art can be closer to being considered masterpieces... for entirely different reasons, with inheritedly different characteristics).

And here’s where it gets tricky: it’s in this striving for perfection, to improve, to get technical / formal / conceptual aspects “right”;  in this acute awareness of the creative act, that expressivity can be hindered. Sure, there always be traits that’ll enable you to identify a piece of art as belonging to someone; but it can lose some of its emotional energy and intensity in this frantic tailoring. Simply because your rational side is greatly influencing what you’re creating; the side of you that’s trying to solve a problem and is thinking about all the aspects mentioned above. 

Of course, shutting down the rational side of you, the left brain, is incredibly difficult, even more so than it may seem; just how truly can you let go of all your worries, and an incessant desire to solve problems, to find answers, and stop... thinking. So it’s in moments of emotional intensity, or extremely relaxation/detachment, in which you forget about making things proper for your left brain’s standards, that expressivity and emotional output truly blossoms. 

In the case of the drawings that sparked my initial post and your reply, I was feeling extremely angry, depressed and frustrated; and I wanted to pour those visceral feelings out, without thinking about any formal aspect.

Now, does it mean that someone will only be able to create a masterpiece while in an intense emotional state? Eh, I would argue that that’s not an universal truth. A masterpiece can derive from a place of mindfulness and/or conscious effort. 

However, this natural expressivity (that reveals itself in those moments) is something that doesn’t come easily to everybody (and can be progressively lost with age, as one conforms to society’s standards; hence why the drawings of a 5 year old are bursting with blissful, carefree expressivity, and are masterpieces in that sense), and it is, like any other art related skill, a skill that needs to be learned, improved, perfected in its own way. 

So lastly, it’s all a matter of, like I mentioned earlier, managing this balancing act between visceral expressivity and technical/formal knowledge or dexterity.

I hope this post managed to be an interesting read!! I bet you probably weren’t expecting a reply like this, but I thoroughly enjoy discussing these manners, and your answer was quite the catalyst to this train of thought. :>