art is expressionless?

art as solely a painting process is what i am comfortable doing and what i know how to do. it helps me get all that i need to out on a canvas. recently, i've been reading a lot of contemporary art magazines and books and it seems that to actually be able to make it in the art world, you have do everything but paint on a canvas. it seems a little foreign to be but i'd like to give it a go.  it's just hard to find a starting point with something so new.  i like to think of myself as a creative person but when i try to find ideas that are different from what others have done in the art world, i am completely lost.  

contemporary art feels like it has no emotion. it is produced based on idea. i'd like to think art is much more than an idea. does that make me more of an artist or less of an artist? 

i thought about the idea of making a painting and then making it in 3-d somehow, almost like an installation. i realize it would take a lot of time and money but it might be interesting. the whole point of my paintings is to make something out of nothing, hence the title of my series "the metaphysics of nothing".  it's almost like tongue and cheek humor- a cartoon or a mockery of our society.   to be able to get that point across in a single piece of art would be fantastic. i think that at this stage, my art is too new and i need to make it more than just a painting for it to be classified as "contemporary"or for it to even do well in nyc galleries.  

i do like painting a whole lot. it's just not cutting edge anymore. i need to somehow make it that way.