Bulldoggity

Up close and personal on a painting, seen from an angled view

Bulldog behavior, getting a hold of something and holding on especially if you’re not sure exactly what it is—worrying it, wiggling it, maybe throwing it up in the air and chasing it, not letting it get away but not pinning it down either.

–Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press

Not everyone goes about art making with that spirit of bulldoggedness that Kathan Brown describes. I have several artist friends—whose work I love—who approach their work with a premeditated clarity and exacting precision, very unlike this way of working. And because my proclivity is increasingly towards “e) all of the above” on so many issues having to do with art and art making, I wouldn’t necessarily hold Brown’s words as guidance in art making. It’s just one way of working in a world with millions of options.

But there is no question that the worrying, wiggling, air tossing and chasing is familiar terrain for me. And it isn’t about feeling angst or self doubt. It is more about holding on with tenacity coupled with a relentless playfulness. I rely on both.

Playful bulldoggedness? Perhaps that’s one way to think about the tension in that concept. But there is also the issue of having the good sense to know when to back off. To know how, and when, to stop.

To that point, Brown references the work and process of Julie Mehretu (who has done several print series with her at Crown Point Press):

Julie Mehretu, in a lecture…spoke of “the thing that I’m chasing” rather wistfully, almost as an aside. The next day in the etching studio she said of the print later titled Unclosed, “If I put too much more in it, it will become definitive. I want it to allude, suggest.”

We often walk a boundary that is unseen until the minute we cross over and go too far. “Doubt is humility after a long, long apprenticeship,” Lori Ellison wrote, a remarkable artist who passed away a few weeks ago and left a huge community of us grieving her loss. Lori wrote eloquently and frequently about humility and the need to be in the not knowing. My sense of being bulldoggity is just that: Not being sure, but holding on all the same.