I have been wrestling with "content" and "meaning" in my work in particular for the past few weeks but really for the past 7 years or so. My badass advisor Linda Geary told me last week to let go of meaning... advice that feels like a gift. Then today in the Elliot Hundley lecture, he was talking about his work and different ideas that go on in his work and it hit me that "content" is not art. Content/meaning is the framework/structure on which art happens. Art can not be so easily summed up as "oh this is a painting about such and such..." if that were the case it would be an illustration not a piece of art (not that illustration isn't art, it's just different).
Art has freedom from other more linear forms of communication... so it's not that I have to let go of meaning altogether... I just have to stop trying to equate every mark in my work with a particular idea. (This baggage is part of the problem with art education... sometimes ignorance isn't bliss but it is freedom.) The ideas exist and come to life in an entire work and following that inspiration and intuition is where the art occurs.
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