By Adrienne Jones
Writers and artists have got to be the craziest lot on the planet. Not because
of some left brained, inherent eccentricity or misunderstood genius quality.
Let’s forget Hemmingway and Van Gogh for a moment and turn the camera
back on the today artists. As the writers well know, seriously pursuing the
arts is one of the most simultaneously rewarding and degrading paths a human
can walk. For every pearl of praise, there are a couple dozen joy sucking,
pressure raising, ego-stinging rejections.
In fact, writers compromise their work right out of the gate, pre-adjusting
their art to meet the mind-boggling multiplicity of contradictory submission
guidelines. You know. Surprise us, but don’t try to surprise us. Shock
us, but not for the sake of shocking us. No high fantasy, low fantasy, or medium
sized fantasy. Remove all violence, gore, profanity and sex; but for the love
of God don’t be a softy; we want hard-core horror! No aliens, cyber punk,
splatter punk, space opera, or space operas involving cyber punk rockers splattering
aliens. Wow us, stun us, blind us with originality, but don’t go overboard.
I mean who do you think you are anyway?
But spoonful after spoonful, the writer takes it, all in the name of the
validity vault; a little box that slowly fills up with publishing credits,
prizes, royalty payments and various other ego pellets to feed them along
the thorny path. Not that there isn’t love of the craft involved, but
come on. Kids love Crackerjacks too but they still dig around for the game
at the bottom of the box. And sometimes the prize is necessary, in terms
of fiction artists taking on corporate writing jobs, technical writing, cold,
mainstream cardboard tasting drivel to pay the bills.
So how about the writer’s creative cousin, the image artist? Do the
wielders of brush and paint, pen and ink experience the same? What compromises
are they forced to make to fill their validity vaults? Well, I asked around,
and the writers will be happy to know that artists bend their dignity and
virtue as well. Work for hire is as coveted in a struggling artist as in
a struggling writer, but as the product tends to be more visual, the conflict
breeds some humorous compromises.
“Often times, if you want to make a sale, you need to do some adjustments that are not quite in the spirit of your work,” Says Jen, a painter and adult art teacher. “I’ve found myself making portraits in which the subject was less than blessed in the looks department. So, softening features so it looked like an attractive cousin was in order. If I have to make them a supermodel, I will. I do what I need to in order to get my name out there and make a sale.”
Christopher, a painter and cartoonist admitted to painful loss of dignity while doing some mural work to make a few extra dollars. “This pseudo-intellectual Hitler with no manners wanted an entire bathroom mural of coastal and underwater scenery. I set about the task, with him watching constantly and criticizing every brush stroke. As I thought the images were quite good, I finally asked him what exactly he didn’t like about it. He claimed that he wanted it to look more ‘realistic’. Which for him, entailed putting a smile on the dolphin’s face, and making the crab grip a rope full of sailor-knots with its pincers, swinging. Yeah, I did it, and I got paid. But I’ll never put that in my portfolio.”
I heard more of these stories, some as benign as feigning interest in travel and quilting. Some more extreme, like taking photographs of pet pug dogs dressed in miniature evening gowns. That artist chose to remain anonymous.
Whatever is the art form, writing, painting or other, you can bet there will
be compromise made in the journey to each individual’s customized version
of personal success. But we can take comfort that we are not alone in the occasional
debasement of our craft. And to be out there doing it in whatever manifestation
is a success of its own. Because to have talent and not use it? Well, that
would be the real shame.