Donald Crank

Mute

Bio:

I grew up in Pakistan as a missionary kid from the age of four to the age of thirteen, when my family found the region too unsafe for Americans and returned to the United States.  Since then I have had to grapple with the implications of being a stranger in an equally strange land.

But that’s not quite what my art is about.  In fact, talking about art is one of those things that people try to do, and so often fail to do, however good at it they believe they are.  While that will not stop me from forging on anyway, I would like to suggest that the most important aspect of art or literature, music or good race-car driving is the ineffable part.

Look at it this way: a good artist who tries too hard to produce good art is like an excellent plastic surgeon who intentionally finds the most beautiful woman in the world, and then tries to fix her face.

My art is a war on motifs and a war on the side of motifs.  In other words, the act of self expression, when it goes wrong, is overly patterned.Since motifs are obstinate and obdurate, the best way to confront them is simply to accept their existence.  If you struggle against them, you will invariably produce them in another way.  Now I work in a Surrealist mode, so when I talk about motifs, I hope that I am talking about deep-rooted psychological facts.  And since it is me myself that is creating my art (expressing myself as I cannot not do) this seems true.

What I meant about the pitfalls of talking about art is just that.  Talking about it is just talking about the stereotyped part.   And if there is a human soul, that human soul is not going to conform to any sort of pattern.  It will be an enormous thing, disturbing or astounding: it will be completely beyond the patterns.  That’s what I’m trying arrive at through my drawings.