R.I.P. Post Modern Barbequeism

Well, today is the day. My moment of reckoning. I will go back to my place of living and begin to pack up my art supplies. It is truly a sad day, but at the same time it is kind of empowering. I don't like the ways it's going down, but I guess it's the way it's going to have to be.

I suppose when people give up on a dream it is never the way the intend on it going down. Dreams are never gradually sort of let go. They seem to always be crushed unrelentingly by the realities of a suck-type of linear concrete world. Never a good place for original thought provoking ideas to flourish.

Now-a-days it seems that it is harder and harder to have, keep, and maintain a dream. There are so many people out there that wish for other's failure and are quick to dismiss another's

ideas it is truly a sad state of affairs. Many people out there truly wish to believe in the pursuit of one's dreams, but the more and more I start to realize is that most people don't have dreams or gave up on them long, long ago. Maybe I should just be satisfied that I have gotten to try and live out my dream for as long as I have. It has been a fun ride, but like all things that are fun it must come to an end. And my end is near. Time to get up, get out, and give up on dreams.

Most people's dreams never come true, while most people never even have the chance to have an idea. I am not talking about winning the lottery or being the world's best basketball player. For the majority of the world these are not only dreams, but fantasy of an unrealistic nature.

This is why I at an early age I decided to set a realistic and obtainable dream. That of becoming an artist. Not the next Da Vinci, or Picasso. I didn't wish to sell million dollar paintings, but instead my dream was to make enough money eventually to keep myself in existence. Enough to pay for the bare necessities. Food, shelter, clothing, and art supplies. Nothing more and not in that particular order. I could do without the luxury items such as anything else. A car, a computer, a girlfriend, furniture. sometimes a bed. I figured that with all these sacrifices and by throwing myself into the proverbial fire I may to be able to join the ranks of a professional artist that survives of their craft. False.

This in hindsight was a poorly formulated idea. After ten years of struggle the economic strangle hold these modern times has been too much to withstand. The only way I see myself being pulled back into art is with the acquisition of my works. Which after staring at my works for the last decade or so I don't see this happening. The previous times I declared my break-up with art there was always something to pull me back in.

This time there is nothing.

Hope is gone.

Pessimism and cynicism are my new positivity towards the art world. Not against other artist or the institution of art, but rather just in general. The idea of art has worn itself out. I don't know exactly what I mean by that, but that is exactly what mean. No other way to describe it.

Normally people just say that's it. I'm done . This sucks. I quit! However, I am not most normal people. I felt propelled to declare my ending of art exploration in some form. And much like my art I have found no or very few respondents. Which is all the more justification for my putting an end to this era of my life. I would call people to notify them, but that seems a little more like looking for pity and that is not what this is about. I have chosen to write this through my blog

1) Because no one reads it anyway.

2) I will have something to go back to visually that will remind me if I ever do get the urge to start making art again. Help remind me what a mistake that venture was.

I honestly feel that I must give a scathing critique of my artistic career in order to truly appreciate how much of a failure it has been along with a drain on my quality of life. Art did open my world up to new experiences both good and bad although anything one does opens you up to new people and situations.

The more I think about it the more excited I get about packing up my failures and putting them in storage. Maybe it's like an investment. When I grow older and finally own a home. I'll have all this awesome art by some nameless nobody that no one knows. I can have my own home with truly one of a kind art. And I'll know this without a doubt because no one has bought anything.

So in concluding, I'll just say this follow your dreams, to a certain point. Don't do what I did or the lemmings and get one idea in your head and follow it until you soon realize that your plummetting to your own demise and it's too late to stop. I guess though in reality following one's dreams until thirty isn't too bad. There is still time to lick the wounds and give life another go.

So I guess what I am really saying to all those who actually do have the balls to follow your dreams don't give up until you've exhausted every last resource or your thirty years old. Which ever falls last. If you haven't succeeded by then... I say give up. Quit. You have my permission. You fought the good fight, but you lost. At least no one can say you didn't try.

The day my art died.

Nothing sentimental. No love lost, only bitterness with a slight tinge of defeat.

There was no bigger dream I had as a child than becoming an artist. This dream started when I was six and I have continued it into an almost full blown reality almost a quarter of a century later. But with something that I once loved soon became tedious. Then became monotonous. Now I just wish it to be over.

I am not a quitter, nor have I ever been. I pride myself on being able to follow through on my ambitions, but this has turned into a death march. I can no longer allow myself to do this. It is with great pain that tomorrow I will begin packing all of my art supplies up with no intention of when or if I am ever going to unpack them. People that know me say I have said this before, but things are different now. I have found a new muse. Which is why I haven't been able to kick the habit before. Art was always my escape. although now looking back on it, it seems more like a prison cell.

Art has kept me at a level in life below satisfactory. I always thought this was okay because I always thought an artist was supposed to suffer. It gave a sort of nobility to my poorness. Which not many careers do.

I never really understood why I did art. I just did it to get the ideas in to reality and it turns out I was good at it. But, being good isn't good enough. Being ambitious isn't good enough. Exhausting every last resource and fund isn't good enough. I took a crap shoot and lost. I figured if I used every waking moment of my life to further myself as an artist since pretty much birth that would have some worth in my success as an artist. However, I have come to find out the hard way that doesn't matter.

In my lack of success in art I have no one to blame,but myself which is the hardest part of this majorly unacceptable failure. It is something that I have done wrong. The only problem is I don't know what. I am no longer willing to just slave away on products that go nowhere. It is too creatively exhausting.

I weigh this decision heavily because I know the state of my mental health is not going to fair so well. Hopefully writing will fill the void.

This is definitely one of the most painful decisions I have had to make, but I cannot watch as my art dies a slow horrible death with zero audience and it's screams of beauty falling on ignorantly deaf ears. I wanted to be an artist to show the world some grandiose idea that things are beautiful blah, blah, blah... That was many a year ago, probably more than a decade or so. This last ten years it has been a war. The War of ART.

I have been forcibly trying to get my art out. Anywhere. Everywhere. North. South. East coast. And I have lost on every front. Every battle was a notorious defeat. I always tried to pull some positive out of it. I cannot do it any more. I don't want to talk about art. I don't want to see it. I just don't care anymore.

I used to say I was married to my art. I guess it's time for divorce court. Good ridden, farewell. I am sad to see a part of me go. A big part of me, but all the same my art had almost become cancerous.

I can't blame everything on art, but you know what I am going to. After investing so much for so many years I definitely feel burned. The career I chose and strive to succeed simply didn't have that same plan in mind for me. All the time, all the money. Now is that exact moment where I either cut off the losses or go down with the ship and I have been going down ever since the ship set sail.

I can't say what is in store for the future of my art career if there is one, but what I can say is for now I am done. I will keep one sketch book in which I will write all my ideas of art in just in case I do decide to pursue it again.

Just like I predicted one main reason I did not want to come back to Ohio was because I feared there might be catastrophic repercussions. Which is what precisely happened. Creative people as well as famous people go to Ohio to be forgotten. Thus, my art is forgotten. It does bring my career full circle though. I was born an artist in Ohio and now I get to watch my art die in Ohio.

After twenty four years of building my body as a vessel for creative energy that flowed into my work. Within a dismal two years of living in Ohio my love and aspirations in the field of visual arts has successfully and systematically been extinguished. I am no longer the person I once was. Something has changed. I have changed. There is no rebirth. Only regret that I may have wasted the last ten years of my life in pursuit of the unobtainable, at least for me.

The one thing that may have led to my demise, might be the one thing I had no control over. Luck. I tried to make my own, but for being born on friday the 13th maybe it just wasn't in the cards for me.

One redeeming aspect of this whole ordeal is that at least I never ever really, truly succeeded. This would be even harder to deal with if I had to deal with my short comings of success. I did on the other hand remain a consistently unsuccessful and an utter failure. This I can be proud of. There is something to be said about consistency.

So now what?

I don't know.

I have just thrown out the window all that I know and all that I am.

So, now... What am I? Or rather what do I want to be is the question.