Melinda R. Smith

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The fact, it is a hard fact, it is a jagged stone of a fact to swallow, that no one likes the work I'm doing makes me more determined to continue doing it. It is true that I myself no longer like the work I'm doing, I cannot find a way to regain my belief in it, that belief cannot be revived and it cannot be faked, but the very question of belief can be put to the side, it can be shoved behind a bunch of bottles and jars as if discarded, long forgotten, it can be all but discarded in the interest of making work that turns its back on collective opinion, blackens its heart against it, defiance is as powerful a motivator as is praise and esteem and the bone-held and all-too-friable belief that what one is doing matters. (I may have felt that for a while, it is a beautiful and fleeting state of grace.) I suppose what I am trying to tell you is this: I have determined that I will continue making this work not despite the fact that no one likes it but because no one likes it, and I will cut through the knitted jungle of unknowing alone, I and my detested work, I and my dim vision and dull tools, I with my heart hard against my own paintings, and I will see what clearing I come into, it is not the same clearing I would arrive at were I to listen to and follow the noisy birdsong opinions of others, it is not the same clearing, it is a different clearing, I am betting it is the one I would rather arrive at, and if it is not, it will not be the first time in my life I will have hacked my way to a disappointing conclusion. Now I will leave you with a logic problem: If the paintings are detested, does that make them detestable?