Drawing It Out

Ashes' recent post makes some good points about honesty in art. I think it links into the meaning of generosity I've been ruminating over lately. Can you really give what you don't own? (re: HighLowbetween's comment on painting what you know). What is that missing link synapse that leads us to (unknown) breakthroughs? How do you keep artistic sincerity from becoming rote visual cues for the real thing?

Subconsciously, I seem to devote a bunch of time to sorting out truth. Two particular dreams come to mind. In 2002, I woke up in a half drowsy state and wrote in my journal, "Treasure hunt where we look for the right words, but soon come to realize what we are in search of is something beyond words, entering into the realm of (visceral) experience." In another dream in 2004, while on residency in South Africa, I was again searching for "the truth", this time at a thrift store. All these people were swarming around this wood barrel filled with shoes. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about and squeezed in. The shoes all had matches, but you had to dig to find the other side. One kept surfacing, it was a Mondrian painting shaped as a high heel shoe (not a shoe with a Mondrian pattern). Everyone wanted to fit them, but no one could. I picked them up myself wondering, "Who fits a shoe this small?" and turned them over to see the size: 4C. Out of curiosity, I tried them on. Surprisingly, they fit. When I woke up, I made some connections: what is the "other side" (of truth?); if the shoe fits, wear it; to foresee the truth(?!); what is it with my fixation on Modernism?; how about the unMondrian shoe form?; how does Derrida fit into all this?; what language are we really talking about here?