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Dear Artist,

Last week, on the same day the Governor of California issued a statewide “stay at home” order, our neighbourhood small-batch ice creamery launched an online payment system and let locals know they could pick up pints, curbside. This small business, which is run by artists, had already begun posting daily flavours on social media. It was a natural evolution made real by a changing-world urgency. Like ice cream, art should be small-batch, experiential and on hand in a crisis.

Be Nice, 2017
Screenprint on wove paper
30 x 22 inches
by David Shrigley (b.1968)

Young artists who’ve grown up with social media have always understood the need to have two practices: the first, making art in the real world and the second, presenting that art to the digital world. So intertwined are their digital personas with how they function as creative people that producing work for online experience is built into life.

With twenty percent of the global population now asked to stay home, artists of all digital stripes are in a unique position to reorganize and shape what art can be, online. While galleries and museums scramble to survive by engaging and retaining marooned art lovers with inspiring online encounters, as makers, artists can try to answer the future’s emotional, spiritual and aesthetic needs with new forms of connection, authenticity and intimacy — the stuff art has always striven to provide in the real world.

My Rampage Is Over, 2019
Screenprint in colours on wove paper
30 x 22 inches
by David Shrigley

While mega galleries and art fairs are building million dollar online viewing rooms and granting access to pre-approved collectors in need of exclusivity, artists can be exempt from the simulation of real-world environments designed for maximum economic results. Instead, let’s find not-yet-thought-of ways to connect and communicate our universal human truths and try to fill the emerging, fresh needs of the soul. In the age of isolation, it is, perhaps more important than ever.

Sincerely,

Sara

PS: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” (Plato)

Esoterica: In my studio, time and tasks stretch in a rhythm of slow-motion play. Outside, the garden grows busy with once-invisible creatures, bolder now in the public spaces once occupied by human traffic. An introvert exhales as the outside world locks stride with her inside yearnings. The knowledge that we’re all experiencing — together in this temporary, alternate system whereby home is the unifier and the preservation of life a fragile priority — presents a chance to re-imagine the world. “The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.” (Joseph Campbell)

The Paper Weighs Nothing but the Ink is Heavy, 2014
Lithograph on paper
25 1/5 × 17 7/10 inches
by David Shrigley

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.” (Joseph Campbell)

Have you considered a Premium Artist Listing?  With each letter, an artist is featured at the bottom of this page. The Premium Artist Listings are a means of connecting artist subscribers through their work and cost $100 per year. Proceeds from each listing contribute to the production of The Painter’s Keys. 

I wish each and every one of you well during this global health crisis and encourage you to flatten the curve by staying at home with your creative materials. I hope our Painter’s Keys community can be a source of friendship and creative inspiration during this time and always.
In friendship, Sara 

You Are Not Alone, You Have This Artwork For Company, 2017
Linocut on paper
15 2/5 × 11 2/5 inches
by David Shrigley

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.” (Rumi)

Against the Wall
oil on canvas
24 x 30 inches, 2017

Featured Artist

Helen Vaughn

My aim as a painter is to bring to life a slice of the world as I experience it. Light, color and form are my vocabulary.