politics Archives | Carol L. Douglas

November 4, 2020

You are what you focus on

Despite the fact that my career rests on social media, I’m all for throwing social media in the trash today.

Wreck of the S. S. Ethie, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas. Available.

Like most of you, I woke up this morning wondering whether we have a president. Apparently not; most states were still counting as of 6 AM. I’m 61 years old and this is the first time I can remember this happening. I think we can take it as read that we’re in an historically-important moment.

We’re an almost-evenly divided nation. That means that the side that wins ought to be at least aware of the thoughts, ideals and feelings of the side that loses. If the past few decades are any indication, the winners will not. They will act as if their slim margin is a mandate.

The Dooryard, oil on canvasboard, by Carol L. Douglas. Available.

I’m very conservative, but I lived most of my life in staunch Democrat country: I was raised in working-class Buffalo and lived in New York during the decades when it morphed from being a swing state to being reliably blue. I’m accustomed to living, working, eating, playing and praying with people with radically-different views from mine. Until recently, it was never a problem. It shouldn’t be.

This should be obvious to any thinking person, but it’s apparently not, so I’m using my blog to state it: your political opponents are as thoughtful, smart and kind as you. That’s true for good or ill.

My friend Brenna asked recently what we planned to do after the election. “Oh, either gloat or riot,” I snarked. I was joking, but sadly, some of my fellow citizens haven’t worked their way past these options. The media will gleefully report on their antics, and the rest of us will chatter about what it means.

Beaver Dam, oil on canvasboard, by Carol L. Douglas. Available through Maine Farmland Trust Gallery.

We humans have only two ways to reconcile our differences: we either talk them out or we split up. Last time the latter happened here, it was a bloody mess: 650,000 died in our Civil War. That was 2.1% of the population. Extrapolate to our current age, and we’d be talking almost seven million people—a holocaust by any measure.

Our only rational tool is civilized conversation, but too many of us live in echo chambers. Modern media encourages that—it surrounds you with the news, people and facts you want to hear.

Leon Festinger was the American social psychologist who pioneered the ideas of cognitive dissonancein a seminal 1956 book, When Prophecy Fails. Festinger had observers infiltrate a cult to see what would happen when the date of a doomsday prophecy came and went. The book explains how people can hold onto discredited ideas in the face of obvious contrary evidence.

Talking with Michelle, oil sketch by Carol L. Douglas. She’s a long-term poll monitor, bless her heart.

Clearly, there’s strength in numbers. As Festinger wrote, “If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must after all be correct.” Festinger did his research within a cult, but today he would find fertile ground on the internet, where all our social biases are confirmed by the ambiguous workings of artificial intelligence.

At the same time, another group of psychologists were pioneering an idea they took from George Orwell‘s biting dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when our need for harmony starts overriding the evidence before our eyes. Once again, there is momentum in numbers; the odd man out either starts thinking like the group, or he’s pushed out entirely. I doubt there are many adults who haven’t experienced this somewhere in their work or personal lives.

But we’re still capable of independent thinking, we humans. We have a choice—we can spend our days watching TV and surfing the Internet and getting more and more anxious, or we can turn the machines off. We can paint, read, pray, walk the dog, and talk to our real-world friends. Despite the fact that my career rests on social media, I’m all for throwing social media in the trash today.

August 7, 2020

Loss and love

We think of it as a political problem but every single coronavirus death in America is, first and foremost, a personal tragedy.

My late Aunt Mary, painted a long time ago by me.

I’m in Buffalo for a memorial service. My uncle was in fine fettle when I was in Argentina in March, texting me about my trip. A few days later, he was dead. Yes, I’m aware that he had lived a rich, full life, but that is small consolation for the sudden loss of someone I loved very much.

My cousins endured their father’s death in the worst parts of the epidemic, separated and unable to comfort him or each other. They’re no strangers to loss; their mother (my aunt Mary) died the day before her sixtieth birthday. I am comforted by the idea that my aunt and uncle are reunited now, along with the infant son they lost so many years ago.

Like my whole extended family, my uncle was a committed Catholic Democrat. I’m sure he was puzzled when I ended up a born-again Reagan Republican. But that was never a factor in our relationship. It puzzles me when people use politics or religion as an excuse to fight with their families.

Grain Elevators, Buffalo, by Carol L. Douglas. The waterfront in my hometown looks so much better than when I painted this. I really should teach a workshop there sometime soon.

A friend sends me videos every day criticizing our government’s response to coronavirus. I delete them without responding. The last emperor to be criticized for his response to plague was Pharaoh, and that was by his escaped Hebrew slaves; his subjects certainly didn’t mention it. Was the Emperor Justinian castigated for allowing bubonic plague into Europe, or Edward III deposed because he didn’t prevent the Black Death?

Mankind’s historic understanding has been that there are only two possible tools against plagues: prayer and science. The Ghost Map is an excellent read about the origins of epidemiology. In 1854, people were more interested in containing cholera than blaming their political opponents for its rise.

First ward, Buffalo, oil with cold-wax medium on gessoed paper, by Carol L. Douglas

Still, there are questions that require communal response. What we do with kids in a few weeks’ time, when they’re supposed to return to their classrooms? How do we protect our elderly? Perhaps both of these questions really point up that we have gotten a little too reliant on large institutions.

None of my kids were born in Buffalo, but they are all traveling back to pay their respects to a man I loved. I’m very touched by this. Last night I went for a walk with my oldest grandchild. He may be only five, but he has insights into complex concepts. If he never spends another day in a classroom, he’ll be fine. Both parents are engineers and quite able to teach him all the way up through multivariable calculus.

When my mother started kindergarten, she did not speak English. Her own mother was illiterate. Public school was a lifeline and the way out of poverty for my mother and her siblings. The same is true of my goddaughter, whose parents are Chinese-speaking former refugees. We have record-high levels of immigrants in the US today. They need public school. The same is true of native-born kids whose parents didn’t have good educations. We must find ways to teach them.

I’ve watched many small businesses close this year. Many of them were already struggling. Lockdown was the coup de grace that brought them down. This is economic pruning. It may yet prove to be a healthy thing for our economy, just as the Black Death ultimately resulted in the end of serfdom in Europe. I remind myself of that every day. Crisis is opportunity. Either we adapt, or we retire from the field.

But all of that is political. Every single coronavirus death in America is, first and foremost, a personal tragedy. This weekend, I’ll be thinking of my uncle and what a fine man he was, and how immeasurable a loss his death is to me, and to a whole community.

April 26, 2017

Will the artist tax penalty be eliminated?

Artists can’t take tax deductions for their donated work. Will that change?

A Fitz Hugh Lane Day in Camden,12X9, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas

Anyone who works in the arts is regularly asked by non-profits for donations of work. These organizations will often naively include a letter saying the donation is “tax-exempt.” That’s flat-out wrong. The deductibility of a created work is generally limited to the value of the canvas, paints and frame (which are so imprecisely measured that they have already been deducted as business expenses).

I learned this the hard way. I took a deduction for a painting I’d donated to the fine conservation group, Ducks Unlimited. A kindly IRS auditor explained the facts to me—right before she struck out the deduction and totted up the interest I owed.

It hasn’t always been this way. Before 1970, creators could deduct the fair-market value of the work they donated. According to a fascinating opinion piece by Michael Rips in the New York Times, the deduction was eliminated because former presidents were inflating the fair-market value of their papers.

Unlike Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, I can document the value of my artwork with a track record of sales. The paintings used to illustrate this post, for example, are among the hundreds I’ve sold in my career.

Drying Sails, 10X8, oil on canvasboard, , Carol L. Douglas

This anomaly of the tax code, which punishes artists for the sins of their social betters, is regularly discussed in Congress. Nothing ever happens, and nothing ever will happen. Artists don’t have the social muscle to force that change.

But according to Rips, help may be on the way from a deliciously ironic source, the challenge of campaign spending laws by the conservative group Citizens United. That’s the case that has liberals’ panties in a twist about corporations being given the rights of people.

More precisely, it held that our First Amendment freedom of speech rights prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. Citizens United attempted to air a film critical of Hillary Clinton before the 2008 Democratic primary. This violated a Federal statute that prohibited corporations and unions from engaging in politicking.

“Donations are a protected form of ‘symbolic speech’ (such as gifts of money, and flag-burning), and the withdrawal of the fair market tax deduction from the creators of those works is — under the precedent of Citizens United — a prohibited form of speaker discrimination,” wrote Rips, who, as a lawyer and novelist, is uniquely qualified to speak to the question. “The government would have to demonstrate a ‘compelling state interest’ for removing the deduction — nearly impossible when attempting to justify the denial of the fair market value deduction to those who donate their own work to cultural institutions.”

Big Boned (Heritage), 16X12, oil on canvas, , Carol L. Douglas

Rips and his pals are interested because of the negative effect this has had on new collections in American museums. I’m more interested in the ability of my fellow painters to support organizations in which they believe.

I sincerely hope Michael Rips is right, but I’m not changing my strategy just yet.

Give if you support the organization’s goals, and if they can get a fair-market price for your painting. Give if the fund drive is chaired by your Great Aunt Helga. Just don’t give under the mistaken notion that you’ll get a tax deduction.

November 11, 2016

Challenge your assumptions

This evening I will stroll over to PopUp 265: A Fresh ArtSpace in Augusta for the opening of Barbra Whitten’s The Usual Suspects. Since I helped her do the two-person part of her installation a few weeks ago, I’m looking forward to the final project.

A graceful old storefront on Water Street, PopUp265’s plate glass windows act like a kind of fish bowl, magnifying the contents. When I last saw the work, it hadn’t spread over the floor yet. How it’s going to work with a crowd is an interesting question.

The figures were painted in an intentionally amorphous way, giving the viewer lots of room to personify them in their own imagination. I immediately identified with one who seemed to be dressed in evening wear. I felt uneasy seeing this figure later with a pentagram on her chest, for a pentagram is anathema to my religious values. Will tonight’s visitors see past the symbols to personalize the figures, or will they be stopped cold by the symbols? Since this question is at the heart of the work, I’m curious to watch the interactions.

Whitten’s earlier piece, now at the Maine Holocaust and Human Rights Center.

Whitten based her figure on a piece she did six years ago as a student at University of Maine at Augusta (UMA). This piece is currently on exhibit at the Maine Holocaust & Human Rights Center at UMA, in Equal Protection of the Laws: America’s Fourteenth Amendment.

The piece has particular resonance with the current crisis in American politics, where we seem to be interacting with labels instead of people. As Whitten’s artist statement says:

This work invites us to…

…EXAMINE important issues;

…REFLECT on our positions;

…IDENTIFY our values;

…CHALLENGE our assumptions;

…ACKNOWLEDGE our prejudices;

…CONFRONT our fears;

…RECOGNIZE our shortcomings;

…ADMIT our failures;

…ACCEPT responsibility for our choices;

…CONSIDER alternative viewpoints;

…ASK difficult questions;

…SHARE our experiences;

…EXPRESS our feelings;

…LISTEN to each other;

…LEARN from each other;

…FIND the good in each other;

…STAND UP for each other;

… APPRECIATE our differences;

…WORK for social justice;

and

…CHANGE our world.

PopUp265 is located at 265 Water Street, Augusta, ME. There are two artist’s receptions: from noon to 1 PM today and 6-7 PM this evening.

November 2, 2016

The tax collector

“Focus,” 2009, flashe on gessoboard by Susan Crile.

Susan Crile ought to be the patron saint of artists. Despite being in the collections of the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim, and other museums, the IRS decreed that her work was “an activity not engaged in for profit.” She owed $81,000 in back taxes for five years’ returns. Ultimately, Crile lawyered up and prevailed. In 2014, the tax court ruled that Crile had “met her burden of proving that in carrying on her activity as an artist, she had an actual and honest objective of making a profit.”

Through her art, Crile has been an outspoken critic of our war conduct, raising awareness of the human and environmental damage being done in the name of the American people. A cynic could be excused for wondering if her politics had anything to do with her tax question.

Years ago I had the hobby-vs-career conversation with an IRS auditor. She couldn’t have been nicer, but she made it clear that I needed to earn more or stop taking the self-employment deduction. For non-artist readers, that might be an oh-duh point. Why work if not to make as much money as you can?

“Daylight Darkness,” 1991, charcoal and pastel on paper, by Susan Crile.

Such a threat shapes your work by reducing your tolerance for risk. It was at that point that teaching became so important for me, because teaching gives you a reliable taxable income. So does painting “safe” work, which Ms. Crile was decidedly not doing. The Crile decision gave us back the room to take risks, which is a very big part of artmaking.

It’s not just artists who make the choice to operate at a loss for a while. This happens with any project that bleeds money at the research and design phase. Investors know the potential rewards outweigh the high risks.

For me, letters from the IRS are an almost-annual rite. Being self-employed makes me a high audit risk. It’s part of the cost of doing business.

“Guantanamo: The Black Box Detainee with Stinging Insects,” 2010, black gesso, acrylic and white chalk on paper, by Susan Crile.

This year was unique because, as of the end of October, I had two IRS inquiries outstanding. The first was trivial: they didn’t have a record of a payment. I sent them a copy of the check, expecting it to go away. So yesterday, when I received a demand for the money—with interest—I started to boil. “They’re really on your case,” my accountant friend observed mildly.

Well, actually, they aren’t. It was an ordinary cock-up where their computer is outrunning their staff. Their representative couldn’t have been more diligent in researching the problem. However, it consumed hours of my time and gave me the sour stomach and headache one gets from interfacing with an intergalactic power. And of course it ain’t over until I get the final notice in the mail.

I personally don’t think our Federal taxes are too high, but I do think they’re way too complicated. They either eat up time that the taxpayer could be using elsewhere, or eat up the money he uses to pay lawyers and accountants. I think they also encourage people to overpay. I’ve heard many times from friends that they don’t take every deduction to which they’re entitled because they’d rather not be in the IRS’ sights.

Why do we tolerate this system, I ask as my paints dry up on my palette.

October 17, 2016

The end of Reason

Figure sketch by Carol L. Douglas

I’ve been blessedly ignorant of the American election for weeks. I would occasionally hear TV news when stuck in a waiting room, but generally I had too little personal bandwidth to take it in. When Canadians would ask my opinion, they did so lightheartedly. No surprise there; it’s not their train wreck.

At this point, I plan to vote for neither candidate; I was born and raised in New York and have followed both of them for a long time. A plague on both their houses.

Please don’t send me any links explaining why I’m wrong. All that ‘information’ is a big part of the problem.

“That’s how men are,” is one argument that has been prematurely dismissed this week. Most of us are rightfully offended on behalf of our own fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. In fact, alpha males have behaved like this for a long time, and we live in a society of extreme moral grunge, so none of this should come as a particular surprise.

Every woman at some point holds a friend’s hand while she experiences the death of her marriage. It’s devastating. The most private things become public while, at the same time, the grief is overwhelming. Sadly, there’s a common thread running through many of these stories: the wife always knew he was a jerk; she just never believed she could do better. I’m always immensely saddened when a friend comes to that realization. Of course she deserved better. As a nation, so do we.

I wonder how Lyndon Baines Johnson would have fared in today’s world of electronic eavesdropping. He was famously crude and said to have been repeatedly unfaithful to Lady Bird. I doubt I would have liked him much, but he was an undeniably effective politician.

In the Sixties, we hid facts to make our politicians more palatable. Today, we create facts to make them less palatable. I receive hundreds of emails a day and an equal number of messages via other platforms. For five weeks, I had a respite, since I simply deleted everything from my phone without reading it. Coming back, I feel like I’ve taken a load of birdshot in the face.

There is no way I can sort out the truthiness in the barrage. Add TV (which I don’t watch) to that mix, and it’s safe to say that we’re all bathing in a stew of disinformation. It is impossible to sort hard news from opinion or, worse, absolute slander.

In 2016, none of us can agree on anything. Prove something and someone will immediately prove that the opposite is actually the truth. This is the end of rationalism, the death of the Age of Reason, brought to us by an overload of information. I’m not enjoying it particularly. Are you?

January 22, 2014

Louis Comfort Tiffany need not apply

Pastoral window in Second Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL, installed 1917. Too bad Tiffany was an artisan, not an artist, right? Luckily for him, he could have bought his way into SoHo several times over.

Only a Philistine could doubt that New York is the center of the art world, but I have to admit there are times it gets on my nerves. For example, this piece by Sharon Otterman in yesterday’s New York Times talks about the process of certifying artists for purposes of snaffling up desirable real estate in SoHo.

Only New York State would be daft enough to have legislation defining what an artist is: “a person who is regularly engaged in the fine arts, such as painting and sculpture, or in the performing or creative arts.” Only the City of New York would be arrogant enough to tighten that up to disqualify actors or jewelers. But assigning two visual artists to rule on who is or is not an artist strains rational thinking. They have rejected people who did not “demonstrate sufficient depth and development over the 20 years since the awarding of his degree,” or lacked a “substantial element of independent esthetic judgment and self-directed work.”

In the 1970s, when New York City was in a rut, there were a lot of vacant buildings in SoHo. The upper floors of many of these buildings had been built as industrial lofts, with large, unobstructed spaces. These attracted artists, who liked the high ceilings, the big windows, and the low rent. Of course they were not zoned as living space, but since the city was broke, everyone pretty much ignored this

In 1971, the Zoning Resolution was amended to permit joint living-working quarters for artists. As with all these trends, non-artists were quick to see the benefits. Therein lies the rub.

Oddly enough, Tiffany could paint, too. Here is his Market Day Outside the Walls of Tangiers, Morocco, 1873

There are several absurdities here. The first is that the current price of this real estate pretty much rules out most practicing artists. Jon Bon Jovi recently listed his flat at 158 Mercer Street for $42 million. No painter I know can afford that.

The second is that the law is so broadly flouted that it’s meaningless. “A single triplex loft at 141 Prince Street, for example, has been owned in the past decade by the media magnate Rupert Murdoch; the design mogul Elie Tahari; and Ted Waitt, a co-founder of Gateway computers,” wrote Otterman.

Joseph Christian Leyendecker was one of the early 20th century’s finest illustrators. I can’t see this getting him permission to buy in SoHo.

The third is that there is tremendous overlap between fine art and fine craft. Louis Comfort Tiffany was trained as a painter, but rapidly became interested in interior design and glassmaking. It is absurd to think he’s not a fine artist as well as a craftsman.

And lastly—and most telling—is that the contemporaries, including collectors and other artists, are almost never right in their assessments of emerging art and artists. The real artists of the 21st century are undoubtedly in Queens or the Bronx, or in in Providence or Beijing. The denizens of SoHo wouldn’t know them if they tripped over them.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!