�

2004-05-28 - 10:18 a.m. -



ruminations on the artistic process
or
just my two cents on the matter

i think the biggest threat to the artistic process is the fear of screwing up. artists get rooted in the thought that everything they produce must be worthy of public consumption & become frustrated when they produce what they consider sub-standard work. they will curse the Muse & fear that they have �lost it� when they cannot create wonderful artistic pieces fit for the masses. poets will talk about �writer�s block� & visual artists will bemoan the loss of a �vision�. but in reality, what they are saying is that the work they are producing is not of a level they feel comfortable presenting in public. this creates a downward spiral where the pressure to perform overwhelms & the quality of work drops even more or, in some cases, stops the artist altogether. they become paralyzed in fear & stop producing anything.

i think artists need to rid themselves of this kind of thinking. artists need to learn to see the beauty in screwing up.

i paint on a regular basis. i don�t have a set schedule� just pick up the brushes when the mood strikes me. most of the time, i have almost no idea what i want to paint. i just sit down at the easel & see what happens. many times i have spent hours working on a painting only to step back & realize that i have spent hours producing crap. an evening spent painting something that i know will never hang on a wall or in a gallery. it is in this moment that three paths present themselves:

1. dive back in & try to make the painting work.
most of the time, this is nothing more than a waste of paint & time. this is akin to realizing that you have taken the wrong highway, so the best thing to do is keep driving in the hope that you will still end up where you wanted to go.

2. give up.
running the white flag up the pole is fine as long as it is not combined with the feeling that you have failed. (as if art were a test you could pass or fail) but most artists, when they give up on a project, often do so with grand emotional upheaval. writers will crumple up the paper & hurl it into the trashcan with flourish. sculptures will mash the clay back into a ball, removing all traces of any failed inspiration. twice in his life, Monet hauled all his �bad� paintings into his backyard & burned them. (on a side note: what if he burned the good stuff?)

3. take what you can & move on.
art is a process that takes both time & practice. the lessons we teach ourselves can be easily overlooked if we focus on the �failure� & not the process. even a bad poem can have a good line worth saving. a bad sculpture could still teach us a new shaping technique. many of the mixing techniques & brush styles i use came from working on paintings that went nowhere. i think i have re-primed more canvases than i have finished.

in the big picture, art is a process & not a destination. work evolves & changes over time. pieces become dated & obsolete, only to be rediscovered & re-invented later on. audience reaction or public response can alter how art is interpreted & perceived. a change in mood can drastically change how one views one�s work on any given day.

the key to all of this is accepting the fact that while not everything you do is worthy of public display, everything you do has some worth.

ok, done for the morning.
you can close your notebooks now.

hope you all have a good day.

be well.