“No Paintings For Sale!”

While on my hiatus from writing, I ran across the story of an American artist and author that touched a nerve and prompted me to get out of my journal. 

Meet Harlan Hubbard.  Born in Bellevue, Kentucky, in 1900.  His father died when Harlan was only seven.  Soon thereafter, his mother moved him to New York City.  There, he received his art education.  In 1919, he returned to northern Kentucky.

According to Wikipedia: As a young man, Hubbard saw the industrial development in America as a threat to the natural world and he came to reject consumer culture. In 1929 he started keeping a journal into which he poured his thoughts on society. In 1943, he married Anna Eikenhout. The following year they built a shanty boat at Brent, Kentucky and traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. 

Harlan is known for his simple lifestyle, simple storytelling, and pastoral art. 

As the story I was reading goes, Hubbard sent a portrait of his mother to a juryless exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum.  When he traveled to see the show, he found the portrait hanging in an obscure corner of an obscure room.  He wrote,

“I do not understand why anyone who has painted as long and seriously as I have, and who has asked little, should have absolutely no success or recognition.  But I have gone this far and now I must go on.”

His defiance had, as Wendell Berry wrote, “achieved a kind of style: “I will paint for myself and turn the canvases to the wall.’”

In negativity of his rejecters, Hubbard found that his “failures” actually helped him connect with the source of his work. 

“No Paintings for Sale."  That's the sign he tacked a sign to his door when he came to the realization that the mere hope of a sale and acceptance of fellow artists and critics had created a “psychic trap.”
 As Gail Sher wrote, “Not until he could paint without even the possibility of selling, would he be able entirely to surrender to himself.”

To paraphrase Harlan Hubbard, “I will write for myself and close the cover of the journal.” 

But, please stay tuned.  Unlike Hubbard, I’m not ready to, “sever completely all possible connections to the world and live on the outside fringe, a rebel”

What is your “No Paintings for Sale” craft, hobby, or passion?

Carpe Diem Life,
David Kuhn

CarpeDiem-Life.com