What, if anything, does artwork say?

In March of 1922 Lord Northbourne, a painter and etcher in his own right, sent a letter to my favourite author, E.V. Lucas in which he made the following observation: ". . . . I venture to suggest that you are on unsafe ground when you judge of an artist's temperament and personality by the characteristics of his work! It is of course an amusing and innocuous pastime, but in real life nothing has seemed stranger to me than the difference which I constantly observe between a man's work and the man himself. // I have noticed in particular that the people who paint very placid pictures are usually nervous, irritable and overstrung - perhaps they paint such pictures as antidotes? Also sometimes swashbuckling palette-knifey and brutal painters are in real life very like rabbits, or even guinea-pigs! etc., etc." Since this is the only segment of the letter which E.V. Lucas published, I can only surmise that this letter was written by Northbourne in response to Lucas' recently published, and subsequently very popular, book on Vermeer. I don't have this book readily at hand but given the remarkable placidity of Vermeer's amazing paintings I imagine that Lucas there made some strong supposition about the painter's personality.

It is easy to imagine even a rigorous historian making suppositions about the personality of the man who painted pictures like this one. Furthermore, E.V. Lucas is exceptionally placid and good-humoured in his writing and if he were going to make generalizations about someone, such assumptions would likely err on the side of serenity and quietude.

Obviously, assumptions about someone's personality are, under any circumstances, questionable. After all, most people's personalities are not easily generalized. This fact does  not, of course, prevent us from continually engaging in such generalizations. W.C. Fields was a curmudgeon, van Gogh was an emotional volcano, etc., etc. And though I don't want to deny that such generalizations are ever possible, or, indeed, useful, they are notoriously difficult to make, particularly about historical figure, people on who we largely rely upon others for our information. And of course, when we talk about someone like Vermeer, it is exceptionally difficult to make generalizations because we know so very little about him. In fact, Vermeer has been called "the Sphinx of Delft" because his life is such a mystery. Thus, talking about Vermeer's personality is an exercise in pure speculation (albeit interesting and entertaining speculation).

I am sure that all of us who produce art wonder what other might think that our work says about us as individuals. In fact most artists I have met are obsessed by the notion because, in the final analysis, it is precisely ego that drives the majority of artists. Well, I never talk about the meaning of my work and almost never talk about its content. And one of the simplest reasons for this is that such talk gets in the way of a viewer's response. I am sure that the content of someone's work does indeed say things about them as people, but exactly what is says should be left up to those who look at it.

With that in mind, here is the earliest of my paintings that I still possess, painted when I was 14 years old. (It is a watercolour and measures about 8 by 9 inches.)

And here is my latest painting, completed yesterday. (It is an oil painting on wood that measures about 24 by 18 inches.) 

I am not sure that these say anything conclusive about me as a person. But before you judge, keep in mind that they are done by the same hand that did this drawing when I was 20. 

Though there is some dispute about who said it, I leave you with the quote - "If you want to send a message, use Western Union."