Portrait of Mike by Sam Yeates
Mike Crockett
I did not study art in school, except for an Art History course in my last semester of college. However, that course had a very strong impact upon me. Rather than starting at the beginning of art, however, the course I took started with 20th century art, beginning with the Fauves. The freedom of 20th century modern art resonated with me, but I didn’t start painting at that point, because I didn’t know how, and furthermore I needed a career that would guarantee me a living. But over the years, I continued to go to museums and galleries wherever I was. Around the age of 40, realizing I needed something more to do in life other than my job, I started thinking about painting again, and realized that nobody knows how to do anything until they do it. I started taking classes at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio, which had an amazing faculty of accomplished artists who exhibited internationally, so I ended up getting a pretty good technical art education for someone starting relatively late after college.
We started coming to Santa Fe in 2013 on a frequent basis, and moving here full-time in 2021. I started attending Tuesday Night Drawing sporadically around 2013 or 2014, and pretty consistently after we moved here full-time. Furthermore, the longer I attended Tuesday Night Drawing over the years, the more I got to know the other artists that participated, and one of the things that struck me from the beginning was the incredible generosity and openness of these artists. I had found what I had been looking for over the years: a community of artists whose energy inspired one another and who genuinely supported one another however they could. I feel like the friendship, spirit, and feedback of these artists, many of whom are represented in this Portrait Project show, has deepened my confidence and my work.
What is my work about? I would say I am always trying to figure out my place in the world, my relationship with the people and places in my life. It is about the process of creating the painting, the working through the emotional and psychological difficulties of rendering an image that feels authentic in the moment, of getting out of the way of the process. The process is very self-centered, narcissistic: I never feel more myself than when I am lost in a painting. I also believe that all art is basically abstract, and I enjoy finding the abstraction in a composition and emphasizing that, while hopefully not losing the object.
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