I should be painting

Finally finished the large landscape; took months of neglect, stagnation and life's other demands along with quite a few days off and week ends to do. Someone, artist or poet once said: art is "never finished only abandoned". I feel that. Especially with that piece. The flip side of that is getting through all the composition and color/contrast issues and really enjoying those final moments where I intensify the highlights and make minor adjustments, feeling a little sad about ending my relationship with the work.

What about those mission statements artists are bound to come up with to get their work shown anywhere? Does anyone find those as useless as I do? I was thinking recently about what I am trying to achieve with my work and i came up with four things:

One: Subject matter. I want the subject to matter. Imagine that?

Two: Design. The composition must be pleasing, allow the eye to move and come back to points of interest. Crazy shit, i know.

Three: Emotion. There should be an emotional impact. Easier said than done. Look at the Mona Lisa to see famous failure.

Four: Technique. The manner in which the paint itself is applied should have it's own interest value. Illustration of point: from a distance the painting works and is pleasing, from up close the texture of the brush stroke is interesting in and of itself.

That's it. Hang my shit on your gallery walls and tell the people I tried. I tried very hard to achieve these four goals. Hope they like it.

To put it another way, I do my very best to not waste a potential viewers time. If they are going to stand before my paintings opening their minds and using their eyes there had damn well better be something there for them to find. All the other crap about color and feeling and meaning and your mother and your father and your lonely ass feelings, where are they listed next to any of the classic paintings? Who knows what Klimt was thinking? Who cares? His subject matter is important. His design is impeccable. Emotion. Technique: how the hell does he make woman's head sit at an unnatural perpendicular angle to the body while preserving the beauty of the figure? Style and technique.

I'm not a worshipper of Klimt's necessarily, he was just the first to come to mind. On the other hand, many of the artists that society holds up as the big winners for me, lose the ability to excite. I can look at them and see how and where they were successful but I am not inclined to be inspired by their work. But that's a whole 'nother discussion. I've got a day off and the howling November winds are reminding me there's painting to be done.