Meaning & Art

A common idea I have heard about tattoos since I was young is that a piece of body art; and in a sense any piece of creative work; should or should not have meaning tied to it. Strapping an ethical, social message to work has historically been noticed at large, but can quite easily become preachy and annoying if placed on everything. For me, trying to direct my flow of work down a narrow path does not generate interesting art and is not nearly as satisfying as how I usually go about things. When painting, I try to ignore any sense of what something is "supposed to" look like based on my understanding and image of the world I perceive. It feels closer to free form dancing or flow arts than the careful process of recreation (of images in my mind or in front of me) that art has been for me in the past.

When I do things this way I end up attaching meaning to them after I have sat with the finished piece for long enough. I really believe the things that I'm dealing with during the creation of these pieces sometimes come through in the form of content or stylistic decisions. The piece below was created soon after I returned from living in Washington state for a short time. I was torn about my own identity, place (geographically), and purpose at large; and was trying to remain positive.

"Moving through life day 1" 48"x32"

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After some time, I noticed the figure on the left was moving away from the map of Salt Lake City (my hometown). The cut out on the bottom right with the woman's head looking left that reads "the man who's trying to make the enemies!" also caught my attention. This is obviously not something you're supposed to do, right? Which at the time, was something I truthfully asked myself quite often.

This is also just me attaching meaning to something that arguably has no inherent representation of anything at all. But that is something beautiful in my opinion. Finding meaning and order in chaos. This can happen with anything. Even a bad tattoo. If you know the person with the tattoo, whatever image is on their body will somehow come to represent them in some way. So the original idea of weather or not art should have meaning tied to it has through this become void. Art can and will have meaning weather you try to create it or not. It creates it's own place in the world specific to the individual observer.