I’m back in Texas after a four year hiatus, sitting in the exact seat I sat in for hundreds of hours learning how to draw, learning photoshop, learning the line work of traditional comics, learning all the important skills that I now consider basic, if not mostly taken for granted. But I sit in this same seat, letting the familiarity of the house, and the kitchen in particular, whisper to me. Return to any place you spent a significant amount of time at, and when silent enough, you’ll realize inanimate objects really don’t shut up.
These walls, though, are referring to an older version of me. A me I have not looked at in awhile. Of course, it’s easy and natural to throw around phrases like ‘a more naive me’, or ‘a more desperate me’ or any other youthful but slightly-effacing adjective. One thing is for sure: that it was a ‘different’ me. After a bit of reflecting, though, a me that makes me smile. A determined-without-knowing me–seen in a snowglobe, captured and playfully ignorant, doing all the right things, despite all the clouded worry and self-doubt.
Still Life: Chicken and Sunflower (2021)
In a feeling of grateful euphoria, my eyes scan the room for any new idiosyncrasies, and rest upon a painting that hangs on the kitchen wall, directly across from where I sit. It’s beautiful–a harmonious still life of my friend’s iconic kitchen rooster statue, standing beside a vase of flowers, a single sunflower turned curiously towards the painting’s focus. The yellows remind me of Van Gogh’s ubiquitous hue. The driving color is the striving red that colors the table cloth, as well as delicately accents the rooster. Lilac purple seems to almost weave through the shadows until finding its highlighted place within the white flower backdrop.
I did not need the signature’s proof to know that it was a work of Chet’s. It is clearly his style, yet more refined and harmonized than I’m used to. In fact, this could very well be the best painting of his I’ve ever seen, however, this is the first time I’ve ever rested my eyes upon it, and specifically as I experience this returning and reflective feeling merging with my subconscious past. The timing was as remarkable as the artwork itself, crafting a moment one can only experience in the manifesting web of existence.
Art is amazing. So much energy can be compacted and invested into a work of art, waiting to be released to the right eye or passing perception, but once the connection is made, a carpet bomb on neurons begin a chain-reaction of images, symbols, emotions, connotations, meaning, values, resemblances, and an infinite amount of other energy-dense implications.
“Art is Always Something Inside of Us Being Let Out”
But more important than all of that jazz is the fact that I have never seen this painting of his before. Before this, I assumed I had seen 99%, if not 100%, of Chet’s paintings. This, I believed, gave me a grasp of what I would expect in seeing something he created. I was wrong. There’s something in this painting hanging on the wall across from me that is not contained in his other works. Of course, I can label this something with a variety of perceptual and descriptive adjectives from the painting’s depth, to its harmony, or even the intentionality of the strokes, but more than any of that is something that I have never seen from him before. As if it reveals a ‘part’ of him that I have never seen before. A part of him that could have always been there, but in this painting finally found its manifested expression. Which reminds me: Art is always something inside of us being let out. Every work of art is a revelation for both the creator and the audience. A chance to see something that may have always been there, but now manifested. A bridge. A portal. An opportunity of understanding.
Art is many things, but what seems to be more obvious than any of them is that Art is simply amazing.
