Yesterday, finally after a whole year of struggles, indecision and plain procrastinations, I have managed to finish a double portrait of a mother and her daughter. All in all it was a good experience in spite of the fact that it took way too long. In a way, everything has its right pace and right time of fruition but I can’t help but feel that I must get a little more organized in terms of commissioned work. I must admit that part of my inefficiency when it comes to timing is partly due to some very basic confusion in regard to the conceptions about the difference between the commissioned work, versus a free work done for myself. Upon some reflection it is quite obvious that this distinction is rather an artificial one since the general feeling is that there is no work that is not commissioned by someone. The only difference really is that you either have someone who is commissioning a work of art from you or you yourself as an artist are the one who is commissioning yourself to do some work of art. In the end, any serious artist will sell the work, one way or the other, either through a gallery after paying a commission or at some sort of exhibition. Either way, there is a payment involved. Also, if I think about the great masters of the past, all of them worked within a context of society that didn’t know anything about artistic freedom and most works were some sort of commission. First thought that comes to mind of course is Velasquez as a court painter of Philip IV where the idea of independent artist was not even thought about and who was very actively pursuing the opportunity to become a court painter. There are of course numerous others, like Goya, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and more. It is amazing to realize that most of our notions about greatness of classical art come indeed from artists that managed to hold on to their individual identity and integrity in spite of the fact that they were supposedly not free in artistic sense. And yet, on a deeper reflection, I think there is still a profound difference between a commissioned work of art and a work that was done for self expression. In a way I believe it is quite similar to the notion of free love. The concept of romantic love is also a relatively new and I think the fact that we are no longer able to go back to times where people had no choice about their heart desires in terms of marriage, in the same way, artists today are no longer willing to be limited by the restrains of a commissioned work .
In fact, if I think there are much more implication to this thought and the whole issue of “free expression” versus “limits of a commissioned work” has much wider connotations in regard to artistic endeavor with many subtexts, undertones and subtle variations.
Perhaps in some other post on subject I will touch a little more on all those subtle variations.
For now, what I wanted primarily is to celebrate with you, my readers the completion of the double portrait of Cassia and Daniel aka “Mother and Daughter”.
