“artists don't own the meaning of their works” -Roberta Smith
“you don’t have to understand the narrative, it’s the voice that is important” -Jerome Silbergeld
“how to do whatever I want” is painted with fancy oils on canvas stretched on a panel of my own design.
I was hanging out with friends, playing a guitar. A musician friend of mine was listening to what I was playing, which was some kind of free association rambling of blues, jazz, and ethnomusical riffs, and he said “look at you, you just play whatever you want!” And my answer was some version of “duh!”
This is why I am an artist, and not a musician, or trades person, or crafts person, or a designer, or a sign painter, or a tattooist, or muralist, or a street or graffiti artist. My whim and error are the structure and story of my own creative world, and i am not beholden to anyone else’s sheet music, skin, public wall, or street cred rules.