Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 720
“Gatecrasher” (in progress), soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38”
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
An artist without a vision is like an individual programmed just to live, breathe fresh air, eat, and then move on. It is that important vision that we see with our mind’s eye and believe in that society cannot live without. The artist with foresight is the one who is responsible for making it possible. Vision encourages us to pursue art and it gives us reasons to live a purposeful life. But without a conscious effort to maintain and focus our vision, some unimportant thing can sway us from our path and persuade the artist to become something else. And without technical skills to clarify what we think is purposeful and meaningful, the artist can be misunderstood.
Samuel Adoquei in Origin of Inspiration: Seven Short Essays for Creative People
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 713
Dropping off “Magisterial” at the framer
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
One of the great traps at times of blockage is that we may accuse ourselves of a deficit of concentration and focus, a deficit of discipline. We then take a paternal or militaristic attitude toward ourselves. We will force ourselves to work, we will go on a schedule, we will take vows. The most dangerous trap is to get into a contest of strength between “will power” and “won’t power.” Discipline is crucial, but we do not attain it by stiffening up. We attain it by sitting still and penetrating the emptiness within, making of that emptiness a friend rather than an adversary or bogeyman.
When you are stuck, meditate, free associate, do automatic writing, talk to yourself and answer yourself. Play with the blocks. Stay in the temenos of the workplace. Relax, surrender to the bafflement; don’t leave the temenos, and the solution will come. Persevere gently. Use intelleto, the visionary faculty. Stay close to the zero mark; indulge neither in great highs or great lows.
The depths are obscured in us when we try to force feelings; we clarify them by giving them adequate time and space and letting them come. What we experienced yesterday as the pride of creativity or the self-deprecating feeling of incapacity we see today as the signal to surrender.
Like the rules of the universe, the whole matter of personal creativity is baffling and paradoxical. To try to control yourself, to try to create, to try to break free of the knots you yourself have tied is to set yourself up at a distance from that which you already are. It is like looking around this way and that for your own head.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
Comments are welcome!
