Painter Mark Ryden, the Art of Personal Investment and Creation

I’ve become a web-fan of Mark Ryden’s paintings via posts from Boing Boing. A couple of days ago they pointed to an LA Weekly writeup of Ryder’s newest show in Beverly Hills. I was struck by a couple things I took away from the article:

1. Art is about extreme effort and obsession with details. The frame for “The Tree of Life,” the painting whose image is featured on this post, reportedly took 4 men in Thailand 9 months to carve (it’s 7′ x 4.5′). Even if subject matter is odd or risque, people appreciate obsessive effort. See Henry Darger’s Realms of the Unreal and William T. Vollmann’s Rising Up and Rising Down (7 Volume Set), a 3,300 page treatise establishing a moral calculus for when violence is justified, as further examples of this phenomenon.
   

   The visceral impact of the work — and thus, much of its popular draw — derives largely from a profound sense of personal investment. As gallery director Lisa Wells points out while we waited for Ryden to repair the clasp on a door at the back of the sculpture, there is no aspect of the show, from the imagery to the frames to the memorabilia to the invitation (a clever, foldout contraption that stands upright on a desk) and the miniature felt pennants he had manufactured for the show, that isn’t specific, considered and exacting. “I keep looking for a slip somewhere,” she says, “but I haven’t found it. He just doesn’t cut corners — anywhere.”

2. Artists focus on their own work above all others. While they may be fans of other work, comparing themselves against what has come before leads to paralysis. The following is a quote from Mark Ryder on where his paintings fit within the market.
   

   “I think it’s important as an artist not to think about where your place is in all that. I think it just freezes you up — I try not to think about it at all. If you start to evaluate: Am I doing something fashionable, am I doing something that fits in with the times, am I doing something new that hasn’t been done before — it will just freeze up the creative process. I’m so lucky that people respond to my art, but if I think about that it’s hard to, ah, make any art.”