Happy St. Patricks Day. I have a bit of the Irish in me, probably where I get my love of music and tendency to excess and rosacea-prone skin. And of course my ability to hold a grudge. So it's probably appropos that today I finally did something I should have done a while ago:

from Connie Rice
to .....
date Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 5:25 PM
subject Bad art and bad friends
mailed-by gmail.com


Hi .....,

It's been a while. I finally feel like I've got my confidence back enough to contact you.

A year or two ago I wrote you and asked since you were posting favorite links on .......org, that you link to my site, since I had linked to you for as long as I had a webpage, and touted you in my blog as well. It was a pretty simple request and fairly normal internet protocol. I felt comfortable doing it since we had bared our souls on ........ for so long. You replied that you were only linking to those sites that had a lot of writing. I guess you had never noticed the blog I've had since 2002. I was a little surprised and decided to take your link down. It was nothing personal, I just only linked to those who linked back (known as "trading" links).

I was even more surprised and totally crushed when sometime later you noticed I had taken it down and proceeded to attack me in your blog and declare that my art was "shitty". It was quite possibly the most incredible low blow I've ever experienced.

Before that, though I had never met you in person, I always thought of you as a friend. I always absorbed every word you wrote about art and life. I asked for your advice. I seriously considered buying one of your paintings. I planned to look you up when I finally made it to .......

I never told anyone, not even my husband who I tell everything good and bad to, about what you said. I never responded to you. I kept it inside and let it pop into my head when I was at my darkest times. Have you ever had anyone tell you your art was "shitty"? Not low quality, not poorly executed, not amateur, but "shitty"? It makes quite an impression.

I didn't paint for a long time after that. Partly because I was busy with my children, but also because I started to wonder if I had been wasting my time all along being an artist.

Recently I have started a new series that I'm really excited about. It's a great feeling and without doubt I know these paintings are good. So I guess I am finally free of the very irresponsible trip you laid on me. I think irresponsible is the best word for it, because you simply did not care how powerful your words would be.

I'm not sure why I'm finally telling you this. I haven't looked at your site or read your blog much since then but today I checked it out and realized I probably did myself a disservice by never calling you out. I would never under any circumstance attack another person's art, because that would be basically trying to wound their soul.

You spend so much time meeting and describing and dissecting and promoting other artists, but do any of them know how capable you are of hurting them too? I don't think they want to.

Connie


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Connie Rice
tuskart@gmail.com
www.tuskart.com