Mascot

I’m a visual artist. Which is to say, I make things that are meant to be seen. But primarily I practice artistry — a practice of active listening, enacting one of our most basic human capacities: being creators.

I don’t consider this pure, pristine, better or really any adjective you might throw at it. The most I could hope for is that for my life, this practice, is true. I also don’t consider it a kind of low or high brow mastery either, although there are many beautiful things and transmissions that have come into this world through many different ways of creating, despite our ideologies.

But as an artist that is primarily interested in listening — and listening long enough for conditioned motivations, ambitions and outcomes to fade or turn sour — I want the kind of artistry that invokes an encounter, one that may or may not occur. An encounter that contains within it its own necessity, its own volition, a pulling and pushing forward of something through the shape of my body.

Body? Maybe we could say Vessel; a too-fancy word for this play dough mold compound of intelligences beyond comprehension that moonlights as a youth hostel for a myriad of microscopic beings bearing the nametag Paul.

— This kind of artistry risks. Risks being disappointing in its simplicity, risks being flat out wrong, irrelevant, irritating, dripping with personal flaws.

— This kind of artistry takes a certain courage, that doesn’t ask for reward or the cubscout badge of canonization, chosen by tastemakers, industry leaders or trends to justify its tenuous purpose.

— This kind of artistry could ruin your life as you know it, lay claim to your best intentions, rip the definition of why you matter from your grip, or spoil the last vestige of moral superiority you had going.

— This kind of artistry isn’t threatened by the idea that everyone is an artist. Because everyone is. Because everyone is capable of artistry. We were born for this.

Thanks for listening.

Paul David Mascot